• hopilavayi: an erotic dictionary

memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

memories of my ghost sista

Category Archives: Prose

pizarnik’s ‘extracción de la piedra de locura’

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by babylon crashing in Poetry, Prose, Spanish, Translation

≈ Comments Off on pizarnik’s ‘extracción de la piedra de locura’

Tags

Alejandra Pizarnik, Extracción de la piedra de locura, i love this so much, poem, Poetry, Spanish translation

-1-

CANTORA NOCTURNA
Joe, macht die Musik von damals macht…

La que murió de su vestido azul está cantando. Canta imbuida de muerte al sol de su ebriedad. Adentro de su canción hay un vestido azul, hay un caballo blanco, hay un corazón verde tatuado con los ecos de los latidos de su corazón muerto. Expuesta a todas las perdiciones, ella canta junto a una niña extraviada que es ella: su amuleto de la buena suerte. Y a pesar de la niebla verde en los labios y del frío gris en los ojos, su voz corroe la distancia que se abre entre la sed y la mano que busca el vaso. Ella canta.

a Olga Orozco

NIGHT SINGER
Joe, make the music of those days …

The one who died of her blue dress is singing. She sings imbued with death, sings to the sun of her drunkenness. Inside her song there is a blue dress, there is a white horse, there is a green heart tattooed with the echoes of the beats of her dead heart. Exposed to all that’s doomed, she sings along with a lost girl that is herself: her amulet of good luck. And despite the green mist on her lips and the cold gray in her eyes, her voice eats away at the distance that opens between thirst and the hand that seeks the glass. She sings.

for Olga Orozco

][][

VÉRTIGOS O CONTEMPLACIÓN DE ALGO QUE TERMINA

Esta lila se deshoja.
Desde sí misma cae
y oculta su antigua sombra.
He de morir de cosas así.

VERTIGO, OR CONTEMPLATION OF SOMETHING THAT ENDES

This lilac is leafless.
It falls from itself
and hides its old shadow.
I must die by things like that.

][][

LINTERNA SORDA

Los ausentes soplan y la noche es densa. La noche tiene el color de los párpados del muerto.
Toda la noche hago la noche. Toda la noche escribo. Palabra por palabra yo escribo la noche.

BULL’S EYE LANTERN

The absent ones sigh and the night is thick. The night’s color is that of the eyelids of the dead.
I make the night all night long. All night I write. Word by word I’m writing the night.

][][

PRIVILEGIO

I
Ya he perdido el nombre que me llamaba,
su rostro rueda por mí
como el sonido del agua en la noche,
del agua cayendo en el agua.
Y es su sonrisa la última sobreviviente,
no mi memoria.

II
El más hermoso
en la noche de los que se van,
oh deseado,
es sin fin tu no volver,
sombra tú hasta el día de los días.

PRIVILEGE

I
I’ve already lost the name that I was called,
her face circles around me
like the sound of water at night,
of the water falling into water.
And her smile is the last thing I lose,
not my memory.

II
The most beautiful of
the night are those who leave,
you who I wanted,
it is endless your not returning,
you’re a shadow until the day of the days.

][][

CONTEMPLACIÓN

Murieron las formas despavoridas y no hubo más un afuera y un adentro. Nadie estaba escuchando el lugar porque el lugar no existía.
Con el propósito de escuchar están escuchando el lugar. Adentro de tu máscara relampaguea la noche. Te atraviesan con graznidos. Te martillean con pájaros negros. Colores enemigos se unen en la tragedia.

CONTEMPLATION

The terrified shapes died and there was no longer an outside and an inside. Nobody was listening to that place because it did not exist.
In order to listen they are listening to that place. Inside your night-mask come flashes of lightning. They cross you, cackling. They hammer you with black birds. Enemy colors come together in tragedy.

][][

NUIT DE COUER

Otoño en el azul de un muro: sé amparo de las pequeñas muertas.
Cada noche, en la duración de un grito, viene una sombra nueva. A solas danza la misteriosa autónoma. Comparto su miedo de animal muy joven en la primera noche de las cacerías.

THE HEART’S NIGHT

Autumn in the blue of a wall: be a shelter for the little dead girls.
Every night, in the duration of a scream, a new shadow arises. It’s autonomous and mysterious and dances alone. I share the fear of a very young animal going out on the first night of its hunt.

][][

CUENTO DE INVIERNO

La luz del viento entre los pinos ¿comprendo estos signos de tristeza incandescente?
Un ahorcado se balancea en el árbol marcado con la cruz lila.
Hasta que logró deslizarse fuera de mi sueño y entrar a mi cuarto, por la ventana, en complicidad con el viento de medianoche.

WINTER’S TALE

The light of the wind among the pines. Do I understand these signs of incandescent sadness?
A hanged man swings in the tree marked with a lilac cross.
Until he managed to slip out of my dream and enter my room, through the window, in complicity with the midnight wind.

][][

EN LA OTRA MADRUGADA

Veo crecer hasta mis ojos figuras de silencio y desesperadas. Escucho grises, densas voces en el antiguo lugar del corazón.

IN THE OTHER DAWN

I see figures of silence and despair coming up to my eye-level. I hear gray, thick voices calling from the empty place of my heart.

][][

DESFUNDACIÓN

Alguien quiso abrir alguna puerta. Duelen sus manos aferradas a su prisión de huesos de mal agüero.
Toda la noche ha forcejeado con su nueva sombra. Llovió adentro de la madrugada y martillaban con lloronas.
La infancia implora desde mis noches de cripta.
La música emite colores ingenuos.
Grises pájaros en el amanecer son a la ventana cerrada lo que a mis males mi poema.

NO FOUNDATION

Someone wanted to open a door. They hurt their hands clinging to their prison of bones from bad omens.
All night she struggled with her new shadow. It rained in the dawn and was pummeled with weeping women.
Childhood pleads from my night’s crypt.
The music blooms in naive colors.
Dawn’s gray birds are to the closed window what this poem is to my pain.

][][

FIGURAS Y SILENCIOS

Manos crispadas me confinan al exilio.
Ayúdame a no pedir ayuda.
Me quieren anochecer, me van a morir.
Ayúdame a no pedir ayuda.

FIGURES AND SILENCES

Twitching hands confine me to exile.
Help me not to ask for help.
They want me my dusk, they’re see I’ll die.
Help me not to ask for help.

][][

FRAGMENTOS PARA DOMINAR EL SILENCIO

I
Las fuerzas del lenguaje son las damas solitarias, desoladas, que cantan a través de mi voz que escucho a lo lejos. Y lejos, en la negra arena, yace una niña densa de música ancestral. ¿Dónde la verdadera muerte? He querido iluminarme a la luz de mi falta de luz. Los ramos se mueren en la memoria. La yacente anida en mí con su máscara de loba. La que no pudo más e imploró llamas y ardimos.

II
Cuando a la casa del lenguaje se le vuela el tejado y las palabras no guarecen, yo hablo.
Las damas de rojo se extraviaron dentro de sus máscaras aunque regresarían para sollozar entre flores.
No es muda la muerte. Escucho el canto de los enlutados sellar las hendiduras del silencio. Escucho tu dulcísimo canto florecer mi silencio gris.

III
La muerte ha restituido al silencio su prestigio hechizante. Y yo no diré mi poema y yo he de decirlo. Aún si el poema (aquí, ahora) no tiene sentido, no tiene destino.

FRAGMENTS TO MASTER THE SILENCE

I
The powers of language are the lonely, desolate ladies who sing through my voice that I hear from afar. And from far away, in black sand, lies a heavy girl full of ancestral music. Where real death? I wanted to enlighten myself in the light about my lack of light. The bouquets of memory are dying. The girl in the sand nests in me with her wolf mask. The one that could not stand it anymore and implored flames, the one we burned.

II
When the roof is flung off the house of language and words do not shine, I speak.
The ladies in red are lost in their masks but they would return to sob in the flowers.
Death is not mute. I hear the mourners’ song sealing the cracks of silence. I hear your sweet song bloom into my gray silence.

III
Death has restored to silence haunting its own prestigiousness. And I will not say my poem and I will have to say it. Even if the poem (here, now) has no meaning, has no destiny.

][][

SORTILEGIOS

Y las damas vestidas de rojo para mi dolor y con mi dolor insumidas en soplo, agazapadas como fetos de escorpiones en el lado más interno de mi nuca, las madres de rojo que me aspiran el único calor que me doy con mi corazón que apenas pudo nunca latir, a mi que siempre tuve que aprender sola cómo se hace para beber y comer y respirar y a mí que nadie me enseñó a llorar y nadie me enseñará ni siquiera las grandes damas adheridas a la entretela de mi respiración con babas rojizas y velos flotantes de sangre, mi sangre, la mía sola, la que yo me procuré y ahora vienen a beber de mí luego de haber matado al rey que flota en el río y mueve los ojos y sonríe pero está muerto y cuando alguien está muerto, muerto está por más que sonría y las grandes, las trágicas damas de rojo han matado al que se va río abajo y yo me quedo como rehén en perpetua posesión.

SORCERY

And the ladies dressed in red for my pain and with my pain consumed my breath, crouching like fetuses of scorpions on the hollow of my neck, the mothers in red who sucked the only heat in my barely beating heart, I always had to learn only how to drink and eat and breathe, I was never taught to cry and no one will teach me even the great ladies attached to the interlace of my breathing with reddish drool and floating veils of blood, my blood, mine alone, which I procured and now they come to drink after killing the king who floats in the river and moves his eyes and smiles but is dead and when someone is dead she is dead, regardless of all your smiles, and the tragic ladies in red have killed the one who floats downstream and I remain as a hostage in perpetual possession.

][][

-2-

UN SUEÑO DONDE EL SILENCIO ES DE ORO

El perro del invierno dentellea mi sonrisa. Fue en el puente. Yo estaba desnuda y llevaba un sombrero con flores y arrastraba mi cadáver también desnudo y con un sombrero de hojas secas.
He tenido muchos amores – dije – pero el más hermoso fue mi amor por los espejos.

A DREAM WHERE SILENCE IS GOLDEN

The winter dog opens my smile. On the bridge I was naked and wore a hat with flowers and dragged my naked corpse wearing a hat of dried leaves.
I’ve had many loves – I said – but the most beautiful one was my love for mirrors.

][][

TÊTE DE JEUNE FILLE (ODILON REDON)

de música la lluvia
de silencio los años
que pasan una noche
mi cuerpo nunca más
podrá recordarse.

a André Pieyre de Mandiargues

TÊTE DE JEUNE FILLE (ODILON REDON)

music like rain
of silence the years
who spend a night
my body will never again
remember.

for André Pieyre de Mandiargues

][][

RESCATE

Y es siempre el jardín de lilas del otro lado des río. Si el alma pregunta si queda lejos se le responderá: del otro lado del río, no éste sino aquél.

a Octavio Paz

RESCUE

And it’s always the garden of lilacs on the other side of the river. If the soul asks you if it is far away, you should answer: on the other side of the river, not this one but that one.

for Octavio Paz

][][

ESCRITO EN EL ESCORIAL

te llamo
igual que antaño la amiga al amigo
en pequeñas canciones
miedosas del alba

WRITTEN IN THE ESCORIAL [1]

I’ll call you
just like yesterday friend to friend
in little songs
fearful of the dawn

][][

EL SOL, EL POEMA

Barcos sobre el agua natal.
Agua negra, animal de olvido. Agua lila, única vigilia.
El misterio soleado de las voces en el parque. Oh tan antiguo.

THE SUN, THE POEM

Boats on natal water.
Black water, animal of forgetfulness. Lilac water, the only vigil.
The sun-baked mystery of the voices in the park. O how old this is.

][][

ESTAR

Vigilas desde este cuarto
donde la sombra temible es la tuya.

No hay silencio aquí
sino frases que evitas oír.

Signos en los muros
narran la bella lejanía.

(Haz que no muera
sin volver a verte)

TO BE

You watch from this room
where the fearsome shadow is yours.

There is no silence here
only phrases that you avoid hearing.

Signs on the walls
they tell of the beautiful distance.

(Don’t let me die
without seeing you again)

][][

LAS PROMESAS DE LA MÚSICA

Detrás de un muro blanco la variedad del arco iris. La muñeca en su jaula está haciendo el otoño. Es el despertar de las ofrendas. Un jardín recién creado, un llanto detrás de la música. Y que suene siempre, así nadie asistirá al movimiento del nacimiento, a la mímica de las ofrendas, al discurso de aquella que soy anudada a esta silenciosa que también soy. Y que de mí no quede más que la alegría de quien pidió entrar y le fue concedido. Es la música, es la muerte, lo que yo quise decir en noches variadas como los colores del bosque.

THE PROMISES OF MUSIC

Behind a white wall are the variations of the rainbow. The doll in her cage is crafting autumn. It is the start of the sacrifices. A new garden, a wail behind the music. And let it always sound, so that none will attend to the movement of birth, the imitation of the offerings, the speech of the woman that I am bound to, this silent thing that is also me. And see that nothing remains of me but the joy of those who were asked to enter and were granted. It’s music, it’s death, what I wanted to say on nights varied like the colors of the forest.

][][

INMINENCIA

Y el muelle gris y las casas rojas. Y no es aún la soledad Y los ojos ven un cuadrado negro con un círculo de música lila en su centro Y el jardín de las delicias sólo existe fuera de los jardines Y la soledad es no poder decirla Y el muelle gris y las casas rojas.

IMMINENCE

And the gray dock and the red houses. And it is not even loneliness And the eyes see a black square with a circle of lilac music in its center And the garden of delights only exists outside the gardens And loneliness is not being able to say it And the gray dock and the red houses.

][][

CONTINUIDAD

No nombrar las cosas por sus nombres. Las cosas tiene bordes dentados, vegetación lujuriosa. Pero quién habla en la habitación llena de ojos. Quién dentellea con una boca de papel. Nombres que vienen, sombras con máscaras. Cúrame del vacío – dije. (La luz se amaba en mi oscuridad. Supe que no había cuando me encontré diciendo: soy yo.) Cúrame – dije.

CONTINUITY

Do not name things by their names. Things have jagged edges, lush vegetation. But who shall speak in the room full of eyes? Who starts with a paper mouth? Names that come, shadows with masks. Cure me with emptiness, I said. (The light was loved in my darkness. I knew there was nothing when I found myself saying: it’s me.) Cure me, I said.

][][

ADIOSES DEL VERANO

Suave rumor de la maleza creciendo. Sonidos de lo que destruye el viento. Llegan a mí como si yo fuera el corazón de lo que existe. Quisiera estar muerta y entrar yo también en un corazón ajeno.

SUMMER FAREWELLS

Gentle rumor of growing weed. Sounds of what the wind destroys. They come to me as if I were the heart of all that exists. I would like to be dead and also enter into someone else’s heart.

][][

COMO AGUA SOBRE UNA PIEDRA

a quien retorna en busca de su antiguo buscar
la noche se le cierra como agua sobre una piedra
como aire sobre un pájaro
como se cierran dos cuerpos al amarse

LIKE WATER UPON A STONE

to the one who returns searching for her old search
the night closes like water upon a stone
like air around a bird
or like two bodies clasping on to each other in love

][][

EN UN OTOÑO ANTIGUO

¿Cómo se llama el nombre?
Un color como un ataúd, una transparencia que no atravesarás.
¿Y cómo es posible no saber tanto?

a Marie-Jeanne Noirot

IN A FAR-FLUNG AUTUMN

What is the name of the name?
A color like a coffin, a transparency that you will not go through.
And how is it possible not to know so much?

for Marie-Jeanne Noirot

][][

-3-

CAMINOS DEL ESPEJO

I
Y sobre todo mirar con inocencia. Como si no pasara nada, lo cual es cierto.

II
Pero a ti quiero mirarte hasta que tu rostro se aleje de mi miedo como un pájaro del borde filoso de la noche.

III
Como una niña de tiza rosada en un muro muy vieja súbitamente borrada por la lluvia.

IV
Como cuando se abre una flor y revela el corazón que no tiene.

V
Todos los gestos de mi cuerpo y de mi voz para hacer de mí la ofrenda, el ramo que abandona el viento en el umbral.

VI
Cubre la memoria de tu cara con la máscara de la que serás y asusta a la niña que fuiste.

VII
La noche de los dos se dispersó con la niebla. Es la estación de los alimentos fríos.

VIII
Y la sed, mi memoria es de la sed, yo abajo, en el fondo, en el pozo, yo bebía, yo recuerdo.

IX
Caer como un animal herido en el lugar que iba a ser de revelaciones.

X
Como quien no quiere la cosa. Ninguna cosa. Boca cosida. Párpados cosidos. Me olvidé. Adentro el viento. Todo cerrado y el viento adentro.

XI
Al negro sol del silencio las palabras se doraban.

XII
Pero el silencio es cierto. Por eso escribo. Estoy sola y escribo. No, no estoy sola. Hay alguien aquí que tiembla.

XIII
Aún si digo sol y luna y estrella me refiero a cosas que me suceden.
¿Y qué deseaba yo?
Deseaba un silencio perfecto.
Por eso hablo.

XIV
La noche tiene la forma de un grito de lobo.

XV
Delicia de perderse en la imagen presentida. Yo me levanté de mi cadáver, yo fui en busca de quien soy. Peregrina de mí, he ido hacia la que duerme en un país al viento.

XVI
Algo caía en el silencio. Mi última palabra fue yo pero me refería al alba luminosa.

XVII
Mi caída sin fin a mi caída sin fin en donde nadie me aguardó pues al mirar quien me aguardaba no vi otra cosa que a mí misma.

XVIII
Flores amarillas constelan un círculo de tela azul. El agua tiembla llena de viento.

XIX
Deslumbramiento del día, pájaros amarillos en la mañana. Una mano desata tinieblas, una mano arrastra la cabellera de una ahogada que no cesa de pasar por el espejo. Volver a la memoria del cuerpo, he de volver a mis huesos en duelo, he de comprender lo que dice mi voz.

ROUTES OF THE MIRROR

I
And, above all, look innocently. Like nothing happened, which is true.

II
But I want to look at you until your face fades away from my fear, like a bird on the sharp edge of the night.

III
Like a girl in pink chalk on a very old wall suddenly erased by the rain.

IV
Like when a flower opens and revealing the heart that it does not have.

V
All the gestures of my body and my voice to make of me the offering, the bouquet left by the wind on the threshold.

VI
Cover the memory of your face with the mask that you will become and scare the girl that you were.

VII
The night for them dispersed with the fog. It is the season of cold foods.

VIII
And thirst, my memory is of thirst, deep down in me, in the well, I drank, I remember.

IX
Fall like a wounded animal in the place that was going to be safe for revelations.

X
Like someone who does not want a thing. Not a thing. Mouth sewn shut. Eyelids stitched closed. I forgot myself. Inside the wind. It all closed and the wind inside.

XI
To the black sun of silence the words were golden.

XII
But the silence is true. That’s why I write. I’m alone and I write. No, I’m not alone. There is someone here who trembles.

XIII
Even if I say sun and moon and star, I mean things that happen to me.
And what did I want?
I wanted perfect silence.
That’s why I speak.

XIV
The night has the shape of a wolf’s cry.

XV
You sense the delight of getting lost in the image. I rose up from my corpse, I went in search of who I am. The female pilgrim of me, I have gone to the one that sleeps in a country of the wind.

XVI
Falling endless into my endless fall where no one waited for me, where I looked to see who was looking for me and saw no one but myself.

XVII
Something fell into silence. My last word was «I» but I was referring to the luminous dawn.

XVIII
Yellow flower constellations draw a circle of blue earth. The water trembles full of wind.

XIX
Dazzle of day break, yellow birds in the morning. A hand releases darkness, a hand drags the hair of a drowned woman who crosses endlessly through the mirror. Back to the memory of the body, I have to return to my bones in mourning, I have to understand what my voice says.

][][

-4-

EXTRACCIÓN DE LA PIEDRA DE LOCURA
Elles, les ámes (…), sont malades et elles souffrent et nul ne leur
porte-reméde; elles sont blessées et brisées et nul ne les panse.
Ruysbroeck

La luz mala se ha avecinado y nada es cierto. Y si pienso en todo lo que leí acerca del espíritu… Cerré los ojos, vi cuerpos luminosos que giraban en la niebla, en el lugar de las ambiguas vecindades. No temas, nada te sobrevendrá, ya no hay violadores de tumbas. El silencio, el silencio siempre, las monedas de oro del sueño.

Hablo como en mí se habla. No mi voz obstinada en parecer una voz humana sino la otra que atestigua que no he cesado de morar en el bosque.

Si vieras a la que sin ti duerme en un jardín en ruinas en la memoria. Allí yo, ebria de mil muertes, hablo de mí conmigo sólo por saber si es verdad que estoy debajo de la hierba. No sé los nombres. ¿A quién le dirás que no sabes? Te deseas otra. La otra que eres se desea otra. ¿Qué pasa en la verde alameda? Pasa que no es verde y ni siquiera hay una alameda. Y ahora juegas a ser esclava para ocultar tu corona ¿otorgada por quién? ¿quién te ha ungido? ¿quién te ha consagrado? El invisible pueblo de la memoria más vieja. Perdida por propio designio, has renunciado a tu reino por las cenizas. Quien te hace doler te recuerda antiguos homenajes. No obstante, lloras funestamente y evocas tu locura y hasta quisieras extraerla de ti como si fuese una piedra a ella, tu solo privilegio. En un muro blanco dibujas las alegorías del reposo, y es siempre una reina loca que yace bajo la luna sobre la triste hierba del viejo jardín. Pero no hables de los jardines, no hables de la luna no hables de la rosa, no hables del mar. Habla de lo que sabes. Habla de lo que vibra en tu médula y hace luces y sombras en tu mirada, habla del dolor incesante de tus huesos, habla del vértigo, habla de tu respiración, de tu desolación, de tu traición. Es tan oscuro, tan en silencio el proceso a que me obligo. Oh habla del silencio.

De repente poseída por un funesto presentimiento de un viento negro que impide respirar, busqué el recuerdo de alguna alegría que me sirviera de escudo, o de arma de defensa, o aun de ataque. Parecía el Eclesiastés: busqué en todas mis memorias y nada, nada debajo de la aurora de dedos negros. Mi oficio (también en el sueño lo ejerzo) es conjurar y exorcizar. A qué hora empezó la desgracia? No quiero saber. No quiero más que un silencio para mí y las que fui, un silencio como la pequeña choza que encuentran en el bosque los niños perdidos. Y qué sé yo qué ha de ser de mí si nada rima con nada.

Te despeñas. Es el sinfín desesperante, igual y no obstante contrario a la noche de los cuerpos donde apenas un manantial cesa aparece otro que reanuda el fin de las aguas.

Sin el perdón de las aguas no puedo vivir. Sin el mármol final del cielo no puedo morir.

En ti es de noche. Pronto asistirás al animoso encabritarse del animal que eres. Corazón de la noche, habla.

Haberse muerto en quien se era y en quien se amaba, haberse y no haberse dado vuelta como un cielo tormentoso y celeste al mismo tiempo.

Hubiese querido más que esto y a la vez nada.

Va y viene diciéndose solo en solitario vaivén. Un perderse gota a gota el sentido de los días. Señuelos de conceptos. Trampas de vocales. La razón me muestra la salida del escenario donde levantaron una iglesia bajo la lluvia: la mujer-loba deposita a su vástago en el umbral y huye. Hay una luz tristísima de cirios acechados por un soplo maligno. Llora la niña loba. Ningún dormido la oye. Todas las pestes y las plagas para los que duermen en paz.

Esta voz ávida venida de antiguos plañidos. Ingenuamente existes, te disfrazas de pequeña asesina, te das miedo frente al espejo. Hundirme en la tierra y que la tierra se cierre sobre mí. Éxtasis innoble. Tú sabes que te han humillado hasta cuando te mostraban el sol. Tú sabes que nunca sabrás defenderte, que sólo deseas presentarles el trofeo, quiero decir tu cadáver, y que se lo coman y se lo beban.

Las moradas del consuelo, la consagración de la inocencia, la alegría inadjetivable del cuerpo.

Si de pronto una pintura se anima y el niño florentino que miras ardientemente extiende una mano y te invita a permanecer a su lado en la terrible dicha de ser un objeto a mirar y admirar. No (dije), para ser dos hay que ser distintos. Yo estoy fuera del marco pero el modo de ofrendarse es el mismo.

Briznas, muñecos sin cabeza, yo me llamo, yo me llamo toda la noche. Y en mi sueño un carromato de circo lleno de corsarios muertos en sus ataúdes. Un momento antes, con bellísimos atavíos y parches negros en el ojo, los capitanes saltaban de un bergantín a otro como olas, hermosos como soles.

De manera que soñé capitanes y ataúdes de colores deliciosos y ahora tengo miedo a causa de todas las cosas que guardo, no un cofre de piratas, no un tesoro bien enterrado, sino cuantas cosas en movimiento, cuantas pequeñas figuras azules y doradas gesticulan y danzan (pero decir no dicen), y luego está el espacio negro -déjate caer, déjate caer-, umbral de la más alta inocencia o tal vez tan sólo de la locura. Comprendo mi miedo a una rebelión de las pequeñas figuras azules y doradas. Alma partida, alma compartida, he vagado y errado tanto para fundar uniones con el niño pintado en tanto que objeto a contemplar, y no obstante, luego de analizar los colores y las formas, me encontré haciendo el amor con un muchacho viviente en el mismo momento que el del cuadro se desnudaba y me poseía detrás de mis párpados cerrados.

Sonríe y yo soy una minúscula marioneta rosa con un paraguas celeste yo entro por su sonrisa yo hago mi casita en su lengua yo habito en la palma de su mano cierra sus dedos un polvo dorado un poco de sangre adiós oh adiós.

Como una voz no lejos de la noche arde el fuego más exacto. Sin piel ni huesos andan los animales por el bosque hecho cenizas. Una vez el canto de un solo pájaro te había aproximado al calor más agudo. Mares y diademas, mares y serpientes. Por favor, mira cómo la pequeña calavera de perro suspendida del cielo raso pintado de azul se balancea con hojas secas que tiemblan en torno de ella. Grietas y agujeros en mi persona escapada de un incendio. Escribir es buscar en el tumulto de los quemados el hueso del brazo que corresponda al hueso de la pierna. Miserable mixtura. Yo restauro, yo reconstruyo, yo ando así de rodeada de muerte. Y es sin gracia, sin aureola, sin tregua. Y esa voz, esa elegía a una causa primera: un grito, un soplo, un respirar entre dioses. Yo relato mi víspera, ¿Y qué puedes tú? Sales de tu guarida y no entiendes. Vuelves a ella y ya no importa entender o no. Vuelves a salir y no entiendes. No hay por donde respirar y tú hablas del soplo de los dioses.

No me hables del sol porque me moriría. Llévame como a una princesita ciega, como cuando lenta y cuidadosamente se hace el otoño en un jardín.

Vendrás a mí con tu voz apenas coloreada por un acento que me hará evocar una puerta abierta, con la sombra de un pájaro de bello nombre, con lo que esa sombra deja en la memoria, con lo que permanece cuando avientan las cenizas de una joven muerta, con los trazos que duran en la hoja después de haber borrado un dibujo que representaba una casa, un árbol, el sol y un animal.

Si no vino es porque no vino. Es como hacer el otoño. Nada esperabas de su venida. Todo lo esperabas. Vida de tu sombra ¿qué quieres? Un transcurrir de fiesta delirante, un lenguaje sin límites, un naufragio en tus propias aguas, oh avara.

Cada hora, cada día, yo quisiera no tener que hablar. Figuras de cera los otros y sobre todo yo, que soy más otra que ellos. Nada pretendo en este poema si no es desanudar mi garganta.

Rápido, tu voz más oculta. Se transmuta, te transmite. Tanto que hacer y yo me deshago. Te excomulgan de ti. Sufro, luego no sé. En el sueño el rey moría de amor por mí. Aquí, pequeña mendiga, te inmunizan. (Y aún tienes cara de niña; varios años más y no les caerás en gracia ni a los perros.)

mi cuerpo se abría al conocimiento de mi estar
y de mi ser confusos y difusos
mi cuerpo vibraba y respiraba
según un canto ahora olvidado
yo no era aún la fugitiva de la música
yo sabía el lugar del tiempo
y el tiempo del lugar
en el amor yo me abría
y ritmaba los viejos gestos de la amante
heredera de la visión
de un jardín prohibido

La que soñó, la que fue soñada. Paisajes prodigiosos para la infancia más fiel. A falta de eso -que no es mucho-, la voz que injuria tiene razón.

La tenebrosa luminosidad de los sueños ahogados. Agua dolorosa.

El sueño demasiado tarde, los caballos blancos demasiado tarde, el haberme ido con una melodía demasiado tarde. La melodía pulsaba mi corazón y yo lloré la pérdida de mi único bien, alguien me vio llorando en el sueño y yo expliqué (dentro de lo posible), mediante palabras simples (dentro de lo posible), palabras buenas y seguras (dentro de lo posible). Me adueñé de mi persona, la arranqué del hermoso delirio, la anonadé a fin de serenar el terror que alguien tenía a que me muriera en su casa.

¿Y yo? ¿A cuántos he salvado yo?

El haberme prosternado ante el sufrimiento de los demás, el haberme acallado en honor de los demás.

Retrocedía mi roja violencia elemental. El sexo a flor de corazón, la vía del éxtasis entre las piernas. Mi violencia de vientos rojos y de vientos negros. Las verdaderas fiestas tienen lugar en el cuerpo y en los sueños.

Puertas del corazón, perro apaleado, veo un templo, tiemblo, ¿qué pasa? No pasa. Yo presentía una escritura total. El animal palpitaba en mis brazos con rumores de órganos vivos, calor, corazón, respiración, todo musical y silencioso al mismo tiempo. ¿Qué significa traducirse en palabras? Y los proyectos de perfección a largo plazo; medir cada día la probable elevación de mi espíritu, la desaparición de mis faltas gramaticales. Mi sueño es un sueño sin alternativas y quiero morir al pie de la letra del lugar común que asegura que morir es soñar. La luz, el vino prohibido, los vértigos, ¿para quién escribes? Ruinas de un templo olvidado. Si celebrar fuera posible.

Visión enlutada, desgarrada, de un jardín con estatuas rotas. Al filo de la madrugada los huesos te dolían. Tú te desgarras. Te lo prevengo y te lo previne. Tú te desarmas. Te lo digo, te lo dije. Tú te desnudas. Te desposees. Te desunes. Te lo predije. De pronto se deshizo: ningún nacimiento. Te llevas, te sobrellevas. Solamente tú sabes de este ritmo quebrantado. Ahora tus despojos, recogerlos uno a uno, gran hastío, en dónde dejarlos. De haberla tenido cerca, hubiese vendido mi alma a cambio de invisibilizarme. Ebria de mí, de la música, de los poemas, por qué no dije del agujero de ausencia. En un himno harapiento rodaba el llanto por mi cara. ¿Y por qué no dicen algo? ¿Y para qué este gran silencio?

EXTRACTING THE STONE OF MADNESS
They, the souls …, are crazy and suffer and nothing brings them a remedy; they are injured and broken and nothing comforts them.
Jean de Ruysbroeck [2]

The bad light has come and nothing is true. And if I think about everything that I ‘ve read about the spirit … when I closed my eyes, I saw luminous bodies that turned in the fog, in the place of evasive communities. Do not fear this, nothing will happen to you, there are no more corpse snatchers. The silence, always silence, the golden coins of the dream.

I speak as I speak. Not my voice intent in mimicking human speech but the other one that testifies that I am still a beast of the forest.

If only you saw the one who sleeps in a garden, in ruins, in memory without you. There I, drunk with a thousand deaths, talked about me to me, curious if it’s true that I lay under the grass. I do not know their names. Who will you tell that you do not know? You wish that you were someone else. Your other self wishes you were another. What happened in that green orchard? It happens that it isn’t green, there isn’t even an orchard. And now you hide your crown by acting like a slave. Who gave you that? Who anointed you? Who consecrated you? The invisible people of the oldest memory. Lost by your own design, you have renounced your kingdom for ashes. The one who hurts you the most reminds you of all your old homages. Even now you cry unhappily and evoke your madness and even want to extract it, cut it out from you, that which remains like privilege or a stone. On a white wall you draw the allegory of repose and she is always a mad queen who lies under the moon on the sad grass of the old garden. But do not talk about the gardens, do not talk about the moon, do not talk about the rose, do not talk about the sea. Talk about what you know. Talk about what vibrates in your marrow and lights and shadows in your eyes, speaks of the incessant pain of your bones, speaks of vertigo, speaks of your breathing, your desolation, your betrayal. It is so dark, so silent this process that forces me. O speak of silence.

Suddenly possessed I’m filled with fatal foreboding of a black wind that prevents breathing. I sought-after the memory of joy that would shield me, like armor or a weapon, or even attack. I looked like the Ecclesiastes: I searched in all my memories and nothing, nothing under the sun’s black fingers. My trade (also in sleep) is to conjure and exorcise. When did this shame begin? I don’t want to know. All I want is silence for myself and the other selves I once was, a silence like the little hut that the lost children find in fairyland forests. And what will become of me if nothing rhymes with anything?

You fall. This endless despair, flowing with the current and against it to the night of the bodies where scarcely a spring dries up when another resumes its path.

Without the forgiveness of water I cannot live. Without the marble tomb of heaven closing I cannot die.

It’s nighttime inside you. Soon you will witness the animal that you are rearing up. Heart of the night, speak.

To have died in the one you were and the one you once loved, to turn and not turn, like a sky that is both stormy and celestial.

I would have loved more than this and I would have loved nothing.

She comes and goes, she calls herself as she swings alone. A lost sense of the days fall drop by drop. Lures of concepts. Vowel traps. Reason shows me a path away from the spot where they raised a church in the rain: the wolf-woman deposits her cubs on the threshold and flees. Mournful candle light is stalked by a cancerous breeze. The wolf-girl cries. None who sleep hears her. May all the plagues plague those who sleep in peace.

This impatient voice of mine comes from old lamentations. Naively you exist, you dress up as a little assassin, frightening yourself in front of the mirror. To sink into the earth while the earth to closes up around me. Ignoble ecstasy. You know they humiliated you until they showed you the sun. You know that you will never know how to defend yourself, that you only want to present the trophy, I mean your corpse, so that they will eat it, so that they will drink it.

Consolation’s home, the consecration of innocence, the unadjectival joy of the body.

What if suddenly a painting comes alive and the ardent Florentine child extends a hand and invites you to remain by his side in the terrible joy of being an object gazed at and admired? No (I said), to be separate you have to be different. I am outside this framework but the way of offering ourselves is the same.

Leaves of grass, headless dolls, I call for my name, I call for myself all night long. And in my dream there is a circus wagon full of dead corsairs in their coffins. A moment before, with beautiful trappings and black eye-patches, the pirate captains jumped from one sailing ship to another like waves, like beautiful suns.

So I dreamed captains and delicious coffins of colors and now I am afraid of all the things that I keep inside, not pirate booty, not well buried treasure, not all the many things set in motion, how many small blue and gold statuettes gesticulate and dance (but they are mute), and then there is the black space—you shall fall and fall—through the threshold of your greatest innocence or perhaps only through madness. I understand my fear is a revolt of these little blue and gold statuettes. A departed soul, a shared soul, I have wandered and missed so much in order to start a union with the Florentine, to be painted as an object to contemplate, and yet, after analyzing the colors and forms, I found myself making love with a living boy even as the painted man stripped me naked and dragged me behind my closed eyelids.

He smiles and I am a tiny pink puppet with a celestial umbrella I enter his smile I build my little house on his tongue I live in the palm of his hand closing his fingers on golden powder, a bit of blood, goodbye O goodbye.

Like a voice not far from the night, this is how the most exact fire burns. Without skin and bones, the animals roams through the ashes of the burnt forest. Once the song of a single bird had brought you thrilling heat. Seas and diadems, seas and snakes. Please, watch how the little dog skull is suspended from the blue-painted sky swings with dry trembling leaves. Cracks and holes in my flesh escaped from a fire. To write is to look for the charred bone of the arm that corresponds to the burnt bone of the leg among the tumult of a great fire. Miserable mixture that I restore, that I reconstruct, I am surrounded by death. Without grace, without halo, without truce. And that voice, that elegy to a first creator: a shout, a breath, there is breathing among the gods. I say my evening prayers. And what about you? You rise out of your lair and you do not understand. You return and it does not matter whether you understand or not. There is no breathe and yet you speak of breathing gods.

If you talk about the sun I shall die. Lead me like a little blind princess, slowly and carefully, like autumn falling in a garden.

You will come to me with your voice tinged with a vague accent that forces me to evoke an open door, with the shadow of a beautiful named bird, with the remains of a shadow left in my memory, with what is left behind when they throw the ashes of a young woman dead to the wind, with the strokes pressed into the sheet of paper after erasing a house, a tree, a sun, an animal.

If he did not arrive it’s because he did not arrive. It’s like autumn arriving. You expect nothing from his arrival. You expect everything. Shadow of my life, what do you want? A delirious party, a language without limits, a shipwreck in your own waters, O so greedy.

Every hour, every day, I would like to not have to talk. Others are like wax figures, me especially, I am more other than the others. All I want from this poem is to clear my throat.

Quick, use your most hidden voice. It transmutes, it transmits to you. So much to do so I fall apart. They excommunicated you from yourself. I suffer, then I do not know. In dreams the king died of love for me. Here, little beggar, they’ll immunize you. (And you still have the face of a girl, but in several more years you won’t even be able to seduce dogs.)

my body opened to the knowledge of my being
and of being confused and diffuse
my body trembled and breathed
all to a song long forgotten
no fugitive of music
I knew the place of time
and the time of place
I opened myself up to love
and rhythms the old gestures of a mistress
inheritrix to the vision
of a forbidden garden

She who dreamed, she who was dreamed. Colossal landscapes for the most faithful of childhoods. In the absence of that -which is not much-, the voice that slanders is right.

The dark luminance of drowned dreams. Painful water.

To late to dream, too late for white horses, too late to leave behind a melody. The melody pulsed in my heart and I cried at the loss of my one good thing, someone saw me crying in the dream and I explained (as far as possible), using simple words (as far as possible), good, safe words (far as possible). I took possession of myself, I plucked her from her beautiful delirium, I annihilated her in order to calm the terror of someone who said that I’d die at home.

And me? How many have I saved?

I have prostrated myself before the suffering of others, I have silenced myself in honor of others.

My red elemental violence receded. Sex at the heart, the path of ecstasy between my legs. My violence of red winds and black winds. The real parties take place in the body and in dreams.

Doors of the heart, the beaten dog, I see a temple, I tremble. What happens? Nothing is happening. Once I detected a total writing. The animal throbbed in my arms with hints of living organs, of heat and heart and breathe, all musical, all silent at the same time. What does it mean to translate yourself into words? And the projects of long-term perfection? Every day you measure the probable elevation of my spirit, the disappearance of my grammatical errors. My dream is a dream without alternatives and I want to die at the foot of the letter of the law of the humdrum that says dying is the same as dreaming. Who do you write for? The light, the forbidden wine, the vertigo. Ruins of a forgotten temple. If only celebrating were possible.

Mourning a mangled visions of a garden with broken statues. Your bones hurt at the edge of dawn. You tear yourself open. I’m warning you and I warned you. Disarm. I’m telling you. I told you. You undress. You get laid. I predicted all this. Suddenly it breaks down: no birth. You take yourself and you overtake yourself. Only you know of this broken rhythm. Now for your booty, you pick them up one by one, this great boredom, where to leave them. Had I been closer I’d have sold my soul in exchange for invisibility. Drunk with myself, with music, with poems, with -why not just say it?- the hole in my emptiness. In a ragged anthem tears roll down my face. And why doesn’t someone say something? And what’s with this great silence?

EL SUEÑO DE LA MUERTE O EL LUGAR DE LOS CUERPOS POÉTICOS
Esta noche, dijo, desde el ocaso, me cubrían con una mortaja negra en un lecho de cedro. Me escanciaban vino azul mezclado con amargura. — El Cantar de las Huestes de Igor

Toda la noche escucho el llamamiento de la muerte, toda la noche escucho el canto de la muerte junto al río, toda la noche escucho la voz de la muerte que me llama.

Y tantos sueños unidos, tantas posesiones, tantas inmersiones, en mis posesiones de pequeña difunta en un jardín de ruinas y de lilas. Junto al río la muerte me llama. Desoladamente desgarrada en el corazón escucho el canto de la más pura alegría.

Y es verdad que he despertado en el lugar del amor porque al oír su canto dije: es el lugar del amor. Y es verdad que he despertado en el lugar del amor porque con una sonrisa de duelo yo oí su canto y me dije: es el lugar del amor (pero tembloroso pero fosforescente).

Y las danzas mecánicas de los muñecos antiguos y las desdichas heredadas y el agua veloz en círculos, por favor, no sientas miedo de decirlo: el agua veloz en círculos fugacísimos mientras en la orilla el gesto detenido de los brazos detenidos en un llamamiento al abrazo, en la nostalgia más pura, en el río, en la niebla, en el sol debilísimo filtrándose a través de la niebla.

Más desde adentro: el objeto sin nombre que nace y se pulveriza en el lugar en que el silencio pesa como barras de oro y el tiempo es un viento afilado que atraviesa una grieta y es esa su sola declaración. Hablo del lugar en que se hacen los cuerpos poéticos –como un cesta llena de cadáveres de niñas. Y es en ese lugar donde la muerte está sentada, viste un traje muy antiguo y pulsa un arpa en la orilla el río lúgubre, la muerte en un vestido rojo, la bella, la funesta, la espectral, la que toda la noche pulsó un arpa hasta que me adormecí dentro del sueño.

La muerte es una palabra.

La palabra es una cosa, la muerte es una cosa, es un cuerpo poético que alienta en el lugar de mi nacimiento.

Nunca de este modo lograrás circundarlo. Habla, pero sobre el escenario de cenizas; habla, pero desde el fondo del río donde está la muerte cantando. Y la muerte es ella, me lo dijo el sueño, me lo dijo la canción de la reina. La muerte de cabellos del color del cuervo, vestida de rojo, blandiendo en sus manos funestas un laúd y huesos de pájaro para golpear en mi tumba, se alejó cantando y contemplada de atrás parecía una vieja mendiga y los niños le arrojaban piedras.

Cantaba en la mañana de niebla apenas filtrada por el sol, la mañana del nacimiento, y yo caminaría con una antorcha en la mano por todos los desiertos de ete mundo y aún muerta te seguiría buscando, amor mío perdido, y el canto de la muerte se desplegó en el término de una sola mañana, y cantaba, y cantaba.

También cantó en la vieja taberna cercana del puerto. Había un payaso adolescente y yo le dije que en mis poemas la muerte era mi amante y amante era la muerte y él dijo: tus poemas dicen la justa verdad. Yo tenía dieciséis años y no tenía otro remedio que buscar el amor absoluto. Y fue en la taberna del puerto que cantó la canción.

Escribo con los ojos cerrados, escribo con los ojos abiertos: que se desmorone el muro, que se vuelva río el muro.

La muerte azul, la muerte verde, la muerte roja, la muerte lila, en las visiones del nacimiento.

El traje azul y plata fosforescente de la plañidera en la noche medieval de toda muerte mía.

La muerte está cantando junto al río.

Y fue en la taberna del puerto que cantó la canción de la muerte.

Me voy a morir, me dijo, me voy a morir.

Al alba venid, buen amigo, al alba venid.

Nos hemos reconocido, nos hemos desaparecido, amigo el que yo más quería.

Yo, asistiendo a mi nacimiento. Yo, a mi muerte.

Y yo caminaría por todos los desiertos de este mundo y aún muerta te seguiría buscando, a ti, que fuiste el lugar del amor.

][][

DREAM OF DEATH OR THE PLACE OF THE POETIC BODIES
“Tonight, he said, from sunset, they covered me with a black shroud and set me on a cedar bed. They poured blue wine mixed with bitterness over me.” — The Song of the Hosts of Igor

All night long I hear the call of death, all night long I listen to the song of death by the river, all night long I hear the voice of death calling me.

So many dreams brought together, so many possessions, so many plunges, in my possessed dead little girl left in a garden of ruin and lilacs. By the river death calls out to me. Desolate and torn, in my heart I hear the song of the purest joy.

And it is true that I have awakened in this place of love because, when I heard its song, I said: this is the place of love. And it is true that I have awakened in the place of love because, with a smile in mourning, I heard their song and I said to myself: this is the place of love (trembling, phosphorescent).

And the mechanical dances of ancient dolls and all the inherited misfortunes and the rushing water going in circles, please, don’t feel afraid to say it: the rushing water going in short circles while on the shore the frozen gesture of the stopped arms in an embrace, in the purest of nostalgias, in the river, in the fog, in the weak sun filtering through the fog.

More from within: the unnamed object that is born and ground into small-grains in the spot where silence weighs as heavy as gold bars and time is a sharp wind that crosses a crack and that is its only statement. I speak of the place where the poetic bodies are made — like a handbasket full of little girls’ corpses. And that is where death sits, dressed in a very old suit, playing a harp on the shore the gloomy river, death in a red dress, the beautiful one, the dismal one, the ghostly one, the one that played the harp all night until I fell asleep inside my own dream.

Death is a word.

The word is one thing, death is also a thing, a poetic body that strength from the place of my birth.

You’ll never be able to surround it. It speaks, but only on a stage of ashes; it speaks, but only from the bottom of the river where death is singing. And death is her, the dream told me, the queen’s song told me. The death of hair the color of crow, dressed in red, brandishing in her menacing hands a lute and bird bones to beat on my grave. She walked away singing, looking like an old beggar while children threw stones at her.

I sang in a foggy morning unfiltered by the sun, the morning of birth, and I walked with a torch in my hand through all the deserts of this world and even dead I would still continue to search for you, my lost love. Let the song of death blossom out within a single morning and she sang, she sang.

She also sang in the old tavern near the wharf. I found a teenage clown there and I told him that in my poems death was my lover and my lover was death and he said: your poems speak truth. I was sixteen and had no choice but to seek out absolute love. And it was in the harbor tavern where she sang her song.

I write with my eyes closed, I write with my eyes open: that the wall crumbles, that the wall becomes a river.

Visions of birth: blue death, green death, red death, lilac death.

Blue and silver phosphorescent suits of the mourners on the medieval night of each of my deaths.

Death is singing by the river.

And it was in the harbor tavern that she sang her song of death.

I’m going to die, she said, I’m going to die.

At dawn, please come, my good friend, at dawn come.

We have recognized ourselves, we have disappeared, I and the friend that I most wanted.

Me, attending my own birth. Me, at my own death.

And I would’ve walked through all the deserts of this world, even if I were dead, looking for you, you who were the place of love.

][][

NOCHE COMPARTIDA EN EL RECUERDO DE UNA HUIDA

Golpes en la tumba. Al filo de las palabras golpes en la tumba. Quién vive, dije. Yo dije quién vive. Y hasta cuándo esta intromisión de lo externo de lo interno, o de lo menos interno de lo interno, que se va tejiendo como un manto de arpillera sobre mi pobreza indecible. No fue el sueño, no fue la vigilia, no fue el crimen, no fue el nacimiento: solamente el golpear como un pesado cuchillo sobre la tumba de mi amigo. Y lo absurdo de mi costado derecho, lo absurdo de un sauce inclinado hacia la derecha sobre un río, mi brazo derecho, mi hombro derecho, mi oreja derecha, mi desposesión. Desviarme hacia mi muchacha izquierda —manchas azules en mi palma izquierda, misteriosas manchas azules—, mi zona de silencio virgen, mi lugar de reposo en donde me estoy esperando. No aún es demasiado desconocida, aún no sé reconocer estos sonidos nuevos que están iniciando un canto de queja diferente del mío que es un canto de quemada, que es un canto de niña perdida en una silenciosa ciudad en ruinas.

¿Y cuántos centenares de años hace que estoy muerta y te amo?

Escucho mis voces, los coros de los muertos. Atrapada entre las rocas: empotrada en la hendidura de una roca. No soy yo la hablante: es el viento que me hace aletear para que yo crea que estos cánticos del azar que se formulan por obra del movimiento son palabras venidas de mí.

Y esto fue cuando empecé a morirme, cuando golpearon en los cimientos y me recordé. Suenan las trompetas de la muerte. el cortejo de muñecas de corazones de espejo con mis ojos azul—verdes reflejados en cada uno de los corazones .

Imitas viejos gestos heredados. Las damas de antaño cantaban entre muros leprosos, escuchaban trompetas de la muerte, miraban desfilar —ellas, las imaginadas— un cortejo imaginario de muñecas con corazones de espejo y en cada corazón mis ojos de pájara de papel dorado embestida por el viento. La imaginada pajarita cree cantar; en verdad sólo murmura como un sauce inclinado sobre el río.

Muñequita de papel, yo la recorté en papel celeste, verde, rojo, y se quedó en el suelo, en el máximo de la carencia de relieves y de dimensiones. En medio del camino te incrustaron, figurita errante, estás en el medio del camino y nadie te distingue pues no te diferencias del suelo aun si a veces gritas, pero hay tantas cosas que gritan en un camino ¿por qué irían a ver qué significa esa mancha verde, celeste, roja?

Si fuertemente, a sangre y fuego, se graban mis imágenes, sin sonidos, sin colores, ni siquiera lo blanco. Si se intensifica el rastro de los animales nocturnos en las inscripciones de mis huesos. Si me afinco en el lugar del recuerdo como una criatura se atiene a la saliente de una montaña y al más pequeño movimiento hecho de olvido cae —hablo de lo irremediable, pido lo irremediable—, el cuerpo desatado y los huesos desparramados en el silencio de la nieve traidora. Proyectada hacia el regreso, cúbreme con una mortaja lila. Y luego cántame una canción de una ternura sin precedentes, una canción que no diga de la vida ni de la muerte sino de gestos levísimos como el más imperceptible ademán de aquiescencia , una canción que sea menos que una canción, una canción como un dibujo que representa una pequeña casa debajo de un sol al que le faltan algunos rayos; allí ha de poder vivir la muñequita de papel verde, celeste y rojo; allí se ha de poder erguir y tal vez andar en su casita dibujada sobre una página en blanco.

SHARED NIGHT IN MEMORY OF RUNNING AWAY

Beating on the grave. On the edge of language they are beating on the grave. Who is it? I asked. I asked who is it. And how longer will this intrusion of external into internal go? or the less internal into the internal, woven like a burlap veil over my unspeakable poverty. It was not the dream, it was not the vigil, it was not the crime, it was not the birth: it was only fist-beatings, like a heavy knife piercing the grave of a friend. And the absurdity of my right side, the absurdity of a willow leaning to the right over a river, my right arm, my right shoulder, my right ear, my dispossession. To deviate towards my left girl — blue blotches on my left palm, mysterious blue blotches — my region of virgin silence, my resting place where I am waiting for myself. Is she still too unknown yet? I still do not know how to recognize these new sounds that begin as a song of objection different from mine own, which is a burnt song, which is a song of a girl lost in a silent city of ruins.

And how many hundreds of years have gone by since I died and I loved you?

I listen to my voices, the choruses of the dead. Trapped between the rocks: embedded in the cleft of a rock. I am not the speaker: it is the wind that makes me flutter so that I believe that this chorus of chance was formulated by the movement of words that came out of me.

And this was when I started to die, when they struck these foundations and I recalled myself. Death’s trumpets can be heard. The courtship of dolls with mirror-hearts stare with my blue eyes — green reflected in each one of the hearts.

Imitate these old-worn, familial gestures. The ladies of old sang among the leper’s wall while listening to death’s trumpets, while watching the procession — they, the imagined ones — an imaginary procession of dolls with mirror-hearts and in each heart stared my golden paper eyes slouching in the wind. This imagined little bird believes she can sing; in truth she just murmurs like a willow leaning over a river.

Paper doll, I cut her from green, red, blue paper as she remained on the floor, at the edge of relief and dimensions. In the middle of the road they buried you, little traveler, you are in the middle of the road and nobody knows you because you do not differentiate yourself from the ground even if sometimes you scream, but there are so many things that scream. Why would anyone come to gaze on a green blotch, a light blue blotch, a red blotch?

If you squeeze them, even the blood and fire, all my images leave traces in the air, without sounds, without colors, not even white. If the traces of nocturnal animals are intensified, are inscribed on my bones — if I root in the place of memory as a creature rooted to the ledge of a mountain and whose smallest movement will make oblivion falls — I speak of the irremediable, I ask for the irremediable — the body unleashed and the bones scattered in silence upon the traitorous snow. Look ahead for my return, cover me with a purple shroud. And then sing me a song of an unprecedented tenderness, a song that does not mention life or death but only of the slightest of gestures, of the most imperceptible of agreements, a song that is less than a song, a song that is a drawing of a small house under a sun that is missing some of its rays; that is where the green and red and light blue doll might live. Perhaps she will stand up and perhaps she will walk into her little house, the one drawn on a blank sheet of paper.

NOTES:
[1] The Escorial is a vast royal building complex located in San Lorenzo de El Escorial, near Madrid.
[2] One of the Flemish mystics of the medieval Catholic Church.

defiance

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Prose

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backbone, defiance, gray whale pup, prose

At dawn the spouts rise into light I slip over the side of the boat — Now they come closer, my face buffeted by swirling wrack I relax I hear the eerie wail of mother and child slowly roll to me wide flukes bending furling — I am weary of walking this land, bitterly breathing air of mountain and wilderness — If I flow through all the seas mingling with the herds as they graze in clouds of plankton will I be washed clean as I was before I lifted myself up in pride out of the grass defiance of gravity stiffening my backbone —

Quote

quote unquote

11 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Prose, quote unquote

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Armenia, ghost city, Gyumri, peace corps memories, prose

During the night a cold mountain rain fell, turning the dusty cobblestones of Atabekyan Street into a long, quaggy blotch, so that when the three-legged dog with the pepper-stump and heavy teats hobbled over to the front gate to meet the young foreigner once he finally staggered out into the chill morning air, skull throbbing with a grievous hang-over his neighbors had good-willingly inflicted upon him the night before, she was already soaked up to her haunches in mud.

Despite the protests of his landlady he had been leaving out dishes of cold cuts bought at the outdoor shuka-market for the dog, for he figured that she must have pups hidden away somewhere in the hollows of the nearby rubble that was all that was left of the neighborhood, house-fronts spilling out into the street in huge piles of pink stones.

“Ah, Mama Shun, dear, stay warm while I’m gone,” he said, bending down to pet her worn nape, hastily brushing away the fleas that rose up in a black mist to coat his hand.  

Far down the earthquake-rippled street the local children were out, shrieking, playing some sort of game of tag. He knew most of their names — Mayranush, Little Aram, Jbduhi, Takavor, Arpi, Isahag — and, off to one side, the small twisted girl that the rest of them shunned, Lusine-jan. She wavered in the morning air with her shaven skull and wide, unblinking eyes as the others kicked up spurts of mud in the numerous potholes. Unlike the others, in their summer dresses and raffish vests, Lusine was clothed for the on-coming winter, with heavy tights and a quilted, stained skirt. Like the three-legged dog she moved slowly through the street, weirdly jerkily, her downcast eyes avoiding his eyes as he passed by.

from Ghost City: a memory

fever dream

10 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in A Girl and Her Submarine, Prose

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1944, a girl and her submarine, children called to war, fever dream, Hiroshima, memories of dead girls, prose

In 1944 a ghost, a mossy gray-green girl once, stood at a village train station, waiting. I’ve heard this story before, how that she will be forever barely sixteen, a volunteer, leaving behind her hand-me-down dresses for a hint of military pantaloons and horsehide ankle-boots, her name stitched inside each new collar. A reflection appearing in the dark glass, unsubtle trying to tell me something as night rolls in.

My world is full of the memories of dead girls, how this one left behind the twisty roads of Mount Hiba, where Izanami, the goddess of creation and death, was buried, how the wind in the red elms over her parent’s house announced a storm, how brown leaves mixed with the elegance of her family’s graves. Are ghost stories maudlin?

I am unshaven, what do I know? Except that ahead of her all of the Pacific is burning, one town after the next will be consumed and finally Hiroshima, a mantra she can’t stop repeating.

Over and over she will practice introducing herself to her new shipmates (Yo-ro-shi-ku o-ne-gai-ita-shi-masu / Please take care of me), she will imagine how they must look, village girls just like her heading to a big city. She will look eagerly out the train window as it pulls into the stations at Osaka and then at Okayama, and then again and again on each of the platforms as they pass by.

Today it is a bullet train, sleek, crammed with office workers and it is impossible to imagine any memory staying alive long enough to ride on it while years before the girl rode out of the mountains and down to the sea and I can feel the rails singing failure, because there will always be children called to war while the sun sets over the mountains with the lights of Hiroshima spread out down below.

the sin-eating priestess

31 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Prose

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Dhimmi, Ottoman Turkey, prose, Qrmuhini, sin-eating

[QRMUHIN/ ՔՐՄՈՒՀԻՆ]

1896

The night was gloomy but the breeze that rustled in the vines of the hanging moss forest was humid and soft. It was not against the wind that the Turkish rider, a girl no more than seventeen, hugged her robes closer about herself, pulled her veil tighter around her face and looked about with dread. She slipped down from her saddle, reluctant and slow, and began to walk toward a ruin building that her people called damned and cursed. Once, before the massacres, it had been a small bungalow, a house of her neighbors; but devastation had let in the harsh winter storms among its pink-grey stones, the heavy summer rains had softened the clay that bound them together, so that now the floor of the building was covered in last year’s autumn leaves and the skulls of double-crossed jackdaws. It was almost, the girl thought, as if Allah himself, in all his wisdom, had blasted the very earth in righteous indignation.

The girl, Hamiyet, stopped, for now there now came from a broken window the flicker of firelight. At the sound of the horse’s shod hooves on the gravel outside a figure came to the door and an elderly woman’s voice called out faintly, “Who’s there?”

Hamiyet called out, nervously in her native Turkish, “I have come for the Qrmuhin.”

“Then return home, girl,” the figure in the doorway replied, “for the Qrmuhin cannot come.”

“Not come …?”

As if by a click of a switch Hamiyet’s fear suddenly turned into impatience. There was sickness in the land, ever since the Sultan’s troops had entered the valley. Now many were dead. The last few surviving Qrmuhini were being kept busy caring for the sins of the righteous dead. Hamiyet drew closer, the horse’s reins looped over her arm.

“The Qrmuhini must come! I’ve been searching for her for three days. I can’t find anyone else. The Qrmuhin from Morratsum is ill, the one at Dzhokhk died yesterday …”

“Died?” the old woman echoed. “I did not know,” and the Turkish girl thought she heard in the Dhimmi’s voice the faint signs of despair.

Hamiyet rolled her eyes. “Of course you don’t know. Anyone living so far away and isolated like this … ”

The old woman interrupted the Turkish girl bitterly. “Of course the Qrmuhini live like lepers! Our daughters take your sins upon their souls and for that you call us Dhimmi and cast us out.”

The girl shrugged. The metaphysics of adults, regardless of their caste, was boring. For her it was simply doing what the Quran instructed: mortals can either accept the teachings of Mohammad or not, it really was that simple. “We will pay you. Plus … there is … food.”

The meal. It was a long-standing joke that for the worse True Believer then the better would be the feast that would be offered to the Dhimmi. No one could remember when this bizarre tradition started, but for years the pious who lived in this small corner of the Ottoman empire spread out food upon their dead’s body so that the starving would gobble down not just the meal but the dead’s sins along with it. The dead, made innocent again, went directly to paradise, Jannah; while the death-priestesses, the Qrmuhini, were feared and exiled from their own village, to live in wretched poverty until the villagers had need of the outcast once more. “Nevertheless,” said the old woman, turning back to the doorway, “my daughter is sick, she can’t come.”

Hamiyet dared not go back without a Qrmuhin. “I can get no one else. The time is passing. My father must be buried tomorrow. My mother is distraught in case he goes to the grave with his sins still upon his chest.” The seventeen year-old insisted: “is your daughter so very sick?”

The ivy, covering the ruined walls, in parts almost tumbled to the ground, seemed to listen. Somewhere off an owl, unnervingly hooting, called out “Hyek! Hyek!” while all about them dried brown leaves rustled and whispered, driven by the warm night wind. The old woman stopped in the doorway. She repeated, “Nobody else?”

“Who else could I get now? They must bury my father by tomorrow.”

The old woman considered a long time. She said at last: “where are you from?”

“I come from Dzhokhk. You know where it is, we’re not too far away.”

“How do you know what’s ‘too far’?” the woman asked. She looked past the girl at the rough little, stout mountain horse. “If … and I only say ‘if’ … if she comes with you then she must ride your horse.”

The teenage girl laughed. “What? … I walk, while a Dhimmi rides my horse?” But then Hamiyet sobered; what if the girl really was too weak to walk?

“Very well,” Hamiyet mumbled, trying to sound generous. “I will let her ride.”

“Both ways,” the old woman demanded. “You will bring her back again?”

“Evet, evet,” the girl said. “We’ll go both ways.”

Once the Armenian had done her work, Hamiyet thought, her kinfolk could decide what to do with her. There was a heap of stones near the door and the Turkish girl went and sat down upon one, cautiously, hugging her robes about her, watching the light glimmering inside the ruins, faint as a pale moonstone.

“Go, büyükanne, and tell your daughter to make haste,” Hamiyet declared regally. “I can’t wait all night.”

“I’ll fetch her,” was the reply, but then the old woman paused: “both ways?”

“Evet! Both ways, both ways,” Hamiyet promised once more, impatiently. She frowned, “what afflicts your daughter?”

“She is hungry,” said the woman simply, disappearing into the bungalow.

Moments later, in the fire’s glow, stood a girl … an ancient girl; from her gaunt, gangling body with her foolish, gentle face, she seemed old beyond years. Even the girl’s hair, a wild ashy thatch that hung almost to her ass, so bleached as to seem to be the white hair of old age, shook this way and that as the Qrmuhin glanced towards the open door, questioning.

Her mother stood silently for a long moment.

The girl finally shrugged hopelessly. She wrapped a thin arm was across her flat belly, her face was streaked with tears. “Mama-jan … it’s terrible to feel this way. My father lies sick in your bed and all I can think of is that I’m hungry.”

“If you do what I tell you,” with a sigh her mother took her daughter’s hand in hers, “we all shall have enough to eat.”

“Eat, Mama-jan?” There had been neither sin nor food in the house for well over a month.

The mother gestured to the distant figure sitting outside on the heap of stones. “This young lady has come for the Qrmuhin.”

“But mother, the Qrmuhin is … ”

The old woman looked into her daughter’s face. She tried to look intent, compassionate, yet fiercely resolute, but only ended up appearing irritated. “Shahani-jan,” she said, “you must go with the young lady.”

“Me?”

The girl was terrified, panic-stricken, freeing herself from her mother’s grasp. She began to beat the air like a child deprived of her toy.

“I couldn’t! I couldn’t! To eat a Turk’s sins …”

Her mother tried to get possession of her daughter’s flailing hands. “Hush now child, hush! Listen! Aren’t you are hungry?”

“But to eat off a dead man’s chest? I know what these people have done, their food will poison me.”

“Shahani-jan, they pay you, they will give you money.”

The girl only struggled and whimpered. “I’d rather starve … I’d rather starve!”

They were all starving. The massacres had left their little community devastated. Her husband had been ill for many weeks; the old woman dared not leave him long enough to try to earn or beg in the villages, the nearest town was eight miles away. Her daughter was too shell-shocked to send on such a task, ever since the Hamidiye had ridden into town; and with her own increasing illness the old woman had lost the will to try.

“If not for yourself, Shahani, for all of us. For your father.”

The poor girl’s vague eyes, unfocused, came at last to rest, looking wretchedly back, into her mother’s. “If he has no food … will he die?”

The old woman turned away her head from her daughter’s gaze. She knew that her husband must die, as all mortal things will eventually. But she simply answered, “yes, daughter, yes.”

“You said … that they will pay me?” The girl pressed her lips together, shivering. “To eat off the chest of a corpse! To take their sins!”

“Shahani-jan … this is what I am trying to say to you.” The old woman caught her daughter’s hands up, urgently whispering. “To get money for your father you must take their sins into your body, you must eat from their body. But listen, listen! You don’t really need to eat the food they present to you, you can bring it away …”

“Bring it away?”

“Eat nothing they give you, Shahani. Not one scrap, not one crumb! Say their queer prayers. Tell the people to let you alone with the body while you eat. But don’t eat anything they lay out for you. Bring all the food back with you.”

“Mother, I don’t understand. You want me to say the prayers but not eat what they give me? I am so hungry and all I’m to do is say prayers?”

“Yes.”

“But … to see a dead body covered in food … and to say the prayers, to wail and scream! Mother! Must I?”

The old woman bent all her strength to uphold her will against her girl’s, “Yes, child. You must go.”

“Bring the food back? Bring it here?” It was dreadful to see the bewildered face lose its purity, the dawn of what her mother was asking of her creeping upon her. “So the food is for father? Isn’t that what you are telling me?”

“The food?” The girl’s thin arms hugged the aching emptiness of her belly.

“The food is not for me,” her mother replied. “I shall not touch one crumb of it, not one crumb.”

That was, of course, the truth of the matter.

][][

Shahani went with the Turkish girl, trembling. Her mother had thrown a rough shawl about her head and shoulders so Hamiyet only saw the old-young face, hooded with wild white hair. The Widow, though, meeting them at the farmhouse door, held her lantern aloft and cried out, “What is this wretch that you’ve brought me? This is no Qrmuhin, fool, this is a Dhimmi girl!”

“She can eat as well as another, mother,” said the girl. But Hamiyet was mortified at having been deceived by an elderly Armenian woman, so she sought to recover herself. “She is better, perhaps. You know that girls are strong and born to bear the burden of their parents’ sins.”

“Do you call this strong?” The older woman said, pushing the Armenian girl before her into the lighted kitchen, turning the thin, dazed face to hers. You could see her heart sink within her. “As for young … is this wretched child to take on the evil of a grown man, a True Believer, in a whole day?”

“She is a Qrmuhin,” said the girl, shrugging. “Let her eat what she can.” Hamiyet threw herself down on the high-backed oak settle at the open hearth where, despite the oppressive heat of the night, a fire sputtered and sparked. “At any rate, there’s no other. I have searched three days; and, as it is, I had to walk all this way while your Qrmuhin rode upon my horse. I spent most of the time holding her to keep her from tumbling off the saddle.”

“She is weak,” said the older woman, looking at the girl with a mix of irritation and pity.

“I am hungry,” Shahani, her face slack with pan, finally announced.

][][

The corpse was laid out in the little parlor where candlelight glowed from the tall dresser reflected in a dozen mirrors. A white sheet was pulled up to the bearded chin, a Greek dish balanced upon the dead chest, heaped with food — thick slices of ham, blue and glistening cheese, aromatic with herbs, eggs boiled and shelled, raw garlic sliced across, fresh-baked lavish, spread thinly with the butter, great wedges of iced cake, sticky slabs of Australian vegemite … Shahani stood looking amazed at it all.

The family, hastily summoned, crowded in after the girl and stood with heads bent around the table; the naked flesh of the patriarch, now rotting, now useless in his pride … the young children of the family shying away like frightened foals in the firelight that flickered into the hideous shadows so that, beneath the dead man’s shroud, the corpse seemed to move. The Turks waited for the Armenian girl to speak and cast their sins away.

Shahani could not speak. Her heart was like shush-winter water flowing deep within her breasts at the sight of the food. An old grandmother said at last, “Shall we begin?”

The Widow had protected the girl from her hurry-scurry ancestor’s scrutiny, keeping the unbeliever in the shadows, muffling her old-young face into her Kurdish shawl the way one does with a horse to blind it from what it is about to charge into. Too late now to find another priestess willing to play along with this game; Hamiyet’s mother had done her best … she wanted no argument from her kinfolk. She prompted the Armenian girl, mouthing, fearful, the opening words of what she knew was the Qrmuhin’s terrible prayer for their sinful dead.

Shahani had heard her father rehearsing what she had to say often enough … the burbling nonsense in Turkish, the pauses while the food was gobbled down, bit by ceremonious bit, the climax of prayer, the storming of Allah’s paradise, the shriek of horror as the prayer at last was answered, the sins transmitted into worthless flesh, the hasty flight of the Dhimmi, eerily sobbing like the Wailing Wall, staying only to pick up the money, by custom flung after the pariah cast out of the True Believer’s household. But the words … the howl of the Ottoman beast all girls had heard but could not imitate … so she made the cry of the She-Wolf that she knew would cry back to her, made the hoot of the Sevan Owl, the scream of the Cinereous Vulture, but these sounds had no words; she knew no words … Shahani began to mumble desperately … imitating a meaningless babel of Turkish words, like the tower collapsing upon itself. The family of the dead man shifted uneasily their thick feet … only half listening, only half watching the damned girl, afraid of the moment that had to come, giving the heathen girl, deliberately, only a divided part of their attention; yet conscious, with a growing consciousness, that all was not as it should be. The Widow made small, urgent, hidden gesture towards the body of her husband.

Shahani blanched. The time had come to eat.

The butter was foul in the candlelight, gleaming yellow-white among the moldy batch four-day old loaves; inside the girl’s mouth her cheeks seemed to sweat saliva. She stretched out a shaking hand towards the food. But her mother’s voice hissed in her ear: “Not one scrap, not one crumb!”

Shahani’s hand dropped back, her bony fists crumpling the sides of her dress.

The old woman had counselled her daughter, feverishly coaching her in the part that she must play, knowing Shahani was not capable of ad-libbing. Now, obedient by a distant summons, Shahani stumbled through the simple sentences. “You must all go. I am the Qrmuhin who must eat alone.”

The family was astonished, protesting. “Yok! The Qrmuhin must eat before the True Believers! That is the whole point!”

The girl repeated, “I am one that must eat alone.”

“Witnesses must be present to see that the sin leaving the body and enters a Dhimmi!”

“You shall hear it when it happens,” the girl replied.

That was the whole point of the ceremony, wasn’t it? The shriek of mortal terror, the terrible wailing …

“If we stand in the next room,” urged the Widow, aiding to the girl’ request, “then we shall hear when the sin passes.”

This Qrmuhin was not like any other Dhimmi sin-eater they had ever seen; in her heart the Widow doubted the girl’s worth but the damned creature was the best that they could do; her husband must be buried the next day. The Widow prayed again for no argument from amongst her ill-tempered kinfolk, True Believers were such a pain in the ass. So, uneasy but resolute, she drove them all into the kitchen next door.

With ears pressed against the balsa, the toothless hoard listened with bated breath to the wild babel that they assumed must be Armenian. Shahani, obedient, stuffed her threadbare pockets with all the food; menemen and börek disappeared into the lining of her torn skirt; simit and kaymak hidden against her naked thighs all the goat fat fit to burst found a home against the green-white hue of her flesh; the glossy fat of calf meat mushed against her hard rib-cage. All the while Shahani set up a shrill chant, incoherently the way men wild with drink do; perhaps it was Dog-Greek and Pig-Latin; the sort of mumbo-jumbo that only amazes those who haven’t gotten beyond 3rd grade.

“When we hear the Dhimmi scream,” one Turkish grandmother said, passionately, “it will be when the sin passes.”

The chanting suddenly ceased. Within the little room Shahani attempted to nerve herself for the screaming bit; yet there is nothing for her to scream about. May Tsovinar bless us all. What divine goddess would ever want one of these daughters scream to? In a corner a German grandfather clock, looking like a great, long, red-legged scissorman, ticked away the minutes. Silently, beneath the shroud, pale against the gloom of old Mormon silver, the Turkish corpse seemed to shift slightly, as if coming awake.

Shahani’s mouth opened, dragging up from her laboring lungs a deep gasp. The girl lurched forward like Frankenstein’s Monster, sick and trembling with this one chance to keep her father alive, this one chance that will, of course, fail, since the villagers know that the Monster and the Monster’s Creator must both die if the unbeliever, the Dhimmi, could not for them what they believed must happen.

Then an odd thing happened.

The metal dish, once heavy with food, resting on the corpse’s chest, began to move. Now emptied of food Shahani saw the beginning of the slow slide. She flung out a hand to stop it and one finger brushed the rim as she leaned over the corpse, crushing the food even more so; but, slick and greasy with bacon fat, the dish continued and a moment later crashed with a metallic bang onto the scrubbed stones of the floor.

Shahani let out one startled shriek as the door burst open. The family stood gaping as the screaming Qrmuhin pushed her way through and dashed outside. Out into the night air, under the stars, fleeing down the mountain-side to the place she called her home. If the Widow flung gold after her, if Hamiyet recollected her promise to bring the girl back home, Shahani waited for neither. After the long panic of the night, terror held her fast. Faint with starvation the girl rushed blindly on and on, stumbling through the hanging, moss-covered forest pungent with tarmac, across the squelchy marshland with its hideous cadaver-hunting night-birds, plunging through the river Pekolot, through scrub and thorn again and so at last, collapsing, bawling, Shahani found herself outside her ruined house, clutching blindly at her mother’s feet.

The old woman could not wait even to comfort or assist her daughter. Instead she burst out, “have you brought the food?”

Shahani dragged herself painfully to her feet. Her old-young face was raw and there was blood around her nostrils. Her long white hair was tangled and dirty. As if in a dream she began to take off items of her clothing, to extract from the hiding places on her body all the poor, battered remnants of a dead man’s feast … the crushed hard-boiled eggs, the börek gone limp and greasy now from long contact with the sweating body, the kaymak and the menemen. Her mother took it all from her, silently, piece by piece, scraped with a cupped palm the melting butter from between the hollow of her daughter’s breasts, gathered it all onto a crust of flat bread, lavash. It was only when her daughter stood before her naked that the old woman at last asked, “are you sure this is all of it?”

It was everything. Shahani had eaten nothing, had carried everything back home. As her mother stood the girl’s heart rose with her … she had saved her father, temptation had been resisted. But even at this realization Shahani could tell something wrong was happening.

“Where are you taking it? It’s for father, you promised!” Ravenous, shattered, Shahani began to drag herself after her mother, crying, “You’re not going to eat it yourself? Why aren’t you giving it to father …?”

The sins of a Turk, what were they? The massacre had swept through the land and he had done nothing to stop it. The Sultan, the “Sick Man of Europe,” had issued orders and he had excitedly carried them out. He had coveted and then watched his neighbor’s house burn and lifted not a single finger to help. They were bad … but the sins of the Qrmuhin were far worse; the long accumulation of sin upon sin, all unshriven and unforgiven, the sins of a True Believer who could only enter paradise if a monster ate them. There was no one who would take on the sins of a Qrmuhin.

The old woman had known, all along, that her husband, Shahani’s father, was in the gray-lands of death; there was nothing that could be done about that, priestess or no priestess. Now Shahani’s mother took her naked daughter by the hand and led her into the ruined house where her husband lay and spread out all the food upon his naked chest.

making the bread that the dead call lavash

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Disaster –- Pain –- Sorrow, Illustration and art, Prose

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Armenian fairy tale, Armenian Genocide, art, Der Zor, Medz Yeghern, prose, the dead are always talking

lavash

The dead are always talking; it is the living, in every age of gizmos and thingamabobs, who have forgotten how to listen.

“I died like this …”

Contrary to what you might believe these stories are told to anyone who can hear, regardless of kinship curse, haunting or vague homicidal family blood ties. Why is it that those who worship ancestors the most turn a deaf ear to their own tribe, let alone the tribe of their neighbors? That is a darkening of the soul. That is something the dead will not abide.

“… far out in a desert, a wasteland of salt, in the heat and stink of what the Turks call Der ez Zor …”

If you can hear stars sing you can listen to the dead. It is simple, for the dead are always talking with red adder’s tongue and the blessed silver owl light. A kiss in your mouth that leaves sparks. Sparks. If you can rub amber’s essence between your fingers you can listen to anything.

…“I was a girl, fey-wristed with curly black hair. I will tell you. I will tell you everything …”

You know some things, but never all. Der ez Zor was a place of suffering during the starving times. During the long walks. During the annihilation. The dead can tell you this because they remember the names. Names for everything. Names that you have been taught to ignore, that you’ve forgotten.

“… we called it Medz Yeghern, the Great Calamity. Remember what I tell you. Remember when the first signs of destruction were blown to us in the wind …”

I tell you about the fourteenth year in the new century. I tell you what I’ve heard because I am nothing and nobody. I can’t speak their language or read from their books. But the dead don’t care about grammar or poor translation or how verbs are conjugated. All they need is a willing audience.

“… when the wild horsemen came and burned down our crops, killing our fathers and husbands and son, telling us that we must go south, to the camps, to follow the relocation orders …”

These are not my kith and kin. These are not my blood soaked lands. Still — Medz Yeghern, the Great Calamity — fills my dreams and will not let me rest. Ever since I returned home from Peace Corps. Ever since I first tasted that strange flat bread that the dead call lavash.

nightmare on horseback

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Armenia, Poetry, Prose, sonnet

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Mariam Abandian, Poetry, prose, sonnet

Petals of lust. Stamens of dreams. Nightmare
upon horseback. My heart was ripped open;

moonlight in the dust, trampled without prayer,
without mercy. Mustachioed horseman,

blood-red fez, ghost. You planted the horror,
roots like ass’ legs; you have death-head lilies

in place of eyes. The was once a flower
that I loved, for there is no smut or sleaze

when it comes to Nature. No shame. No sin.
That’s Man’s domain. I don’t want a trampled

flower or a dream that promises lust
but can never deliver. Horror-man,

you rise, with your broken tusk you impaled
my curse, you’ll spawn only decay and rust.

iyabode and the demoness of the shadows [2]

16 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, haiku, Prose, story

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haiku, Iyabode and the demoness of the shadows, prose, xenomorph erotica

Warning:
Story contains a touch of graphic violence.
Please read at your own discretion. Cheers!

][][

one more night alone
with all my grotesque passions
tender as the rain.

… she had no eyes in her face, not even the hint of sockets; her elongated skull was smooth to the touch and exquisite to behold. Now, crouching in the underbrush where the trail took a sharp bend, she could smell the man long before she heard him. What he was doing in the forest she couldn’t fathom, for creatures such as these remained bizarre and alien to her. They were dangerous and merciless, bringing death with them wherever they went. There was something, though, tragic and fascinating about them, too, she thought. They were only following their dark natures, which was why they frightened her as much as they did.

Sunlight cast dappled patches across her body, warming her, making her hiss with pleasure. She could smell the greens and golds all around her, breath in the riot of colors. When she concentrated she could distinctly hear each leaf rustling in the forest’s canopy far overhead.

Slowly tensing, she listened as the man stooped to pick fruit fallen to the ground, chewing on each as he went along. She thought about what she was about to do and paused. Of late she had become disturbed, upset even, whenever the necessity of violence appeared before her. She loathed violence, but some seed of self-preservation deep within her soul meant that she had to eat to survive. She said a silent prayer to Xeraxa, Lady of the Hunt, that it would be quick and merciful as she readied herself. Her shoulder blades arched, her segmented tail curled upward. She could smell everything about him now; the fruit digesting in his stomach, the musty cardamon of his clothing, the ancient leather of his wallet, the sour milkish fear his senses were just starting to give off as some primitive part of his brain realized something was lurking in the shadows.

With a blood-curdling screech, she erupted upwards, grace in motion, landing full upon her prey even as he turned.

The man’s eyes widened in shock and panic as he saw her. His arms flew up to try to protect himself even as her claws dug deep into his chest, her teeth burying themselves into the flesh of his neck. Blood spouted against the side of her face and despite her best efforts to remain dispassionate a rumble of satisfaction ran through her. At times she loathed the bestial side of her nature, but when it kicked in there was something deeply satisfying, erotic even, in the chase and capture, the killing and devouring, that she had never truly purged from her psyche, no matter how often or fervently she prayed.

She paused with reddish meat hanging from the sides of her mouth, raised her sightless head and breathed in deeply. Something was coming. She drew in a great breath, tasted every molecule that flooded her lungs, thought hard about what each one said. Someone was coming; a second man had entered the forest, but this creature was unlike anything that she had ever encountered.

][][

The village of Adesuwa lay on the border between Benin and Burkina Faso, sleepy and alone. The nearest city, Tanguieta, was a hard two hours drive, and since the recent assassination of Thomas Sankara, whom the Western press had dubbed, “Africa’s Che Guevara,” it was uncertain who would fill the power vacuum and whether the peace that Adesuwa had enjoyed for over a decade would continue.

The village had a shaman — some called her a healer while others a cursed albino witch, though truth be told Kafoucha Sazu was neither, having written her dissertation on “Traditional Midwives of the Fon people and their impact on Post-Colonial transition,” at the Université des Sciences et Technologies du Bénin back in 1981 — who had once come face to face with the Démoness d’ombres and had walked away unscathed. It was for that reason that Iyabode had tracked her down, begging an hour of the her time and listening to everything that she had to say.

The young man leaned forward as Kafoucha spoke about the bloodthirsty creature that lay in wait in the heart of the Pendjari forest. Iyabode did not believe in superstitions. He believed in poachers, for Pendjari was home to more than three thousand West African elephants and, as his father and grandfather had done before him, the Benin government paid him to track down these ivory thieves and use whatever force necessary to persuade them to find less hazardous careers.

Try as he might to ignore his doubts, though, Iyabode was troubled by the story of a star beast that had fallen from the sky. Occasionally poachers had been known to murder hapless villagers who had witnessed more than they should have; but not like this. Neighbors would simply vanish, their mutilated bodies turning up days later. There was nothing in Pendjari that could inflict the sort of catastrophic violence that was being reported. Iyabode had heard stories of madmen escaping into the hinterlands, living like beasts, but the mad were not clever, they couldn’t hunt and more often than not simply perished in the summer heat before anyone could find them. This, though, whatever it was that dwelt in the shadows, was anything but mad. It left no trail, no trace, nothing the young man could use to follow. It simply struck and disappeared.

][][

Iyabode lay under the sky that night, trying to sleep. The air, warm and muggy, caused the great arm of the Milky Way overhead to blur and dance. The forest had never once unnerved him — he had grown up in it, knew every animal that passed through its borders, could tell the difference between a Swallow-tailed Kite and a Black-rumped Waxbill just by their calls — but tonight everything was different. Somewhere out there, in the dark, lay a puzzle that he could not comprehend. How could he track something that left nothing behind? How could he follow something that simply vanished? Despite the wet heat in the air Iyabode shivered and did not know why, while a dozen feet away, wrapped in dark so tightly that not even the little red termites that crawled upon the forest floor knew that she was there, Xia, as she called herself, watched. She saw his rifle laying near by and the backpack that he used as a pillow and wondered where he had come from. He smelled different somehow … tempting.

Licking her lips, she shook her head and made a noise, kssh, the closest that she would ever come to purring. As Iyabode watched the stars twinkling in the night sky, he heard a weird rumble off in a patch of darkness nearby; darkness that appeared to sway in a different rhythm to the wind-blown grasses all around him. Forehead furrowed in curiosity, the young man raised himself on one elbow and briefly saw moonlight flickering and dancing across a huge shape: obsidian skin, teeth that glowed dully as saliva dripped, a tail like a scorpion that snaked slowly back and forth. Even as he stared, unsure of what he was seeing, the clouds parted and what he mistook to be Kafoucha’s Demoness of the Shadows instead resolved into a small bush, silver-black in the moonlight. Frowning, he laid back down after staring hard at the bush for a long moment.

Sighing, Iyabode finally fell asleep, not knowing what the sunrise would bring.

][][

Iyabode awoke in the pre-dawn, the sky slowly turning from gun-metal blues to pinks and oranges; giving off a humid heat that found its way everywhere. Somewhere out there, hiding in a tree like one of the big cats, or perhaps asleep in one of the numerous caves carved out from the rocky hills, lay his mystery. He was sure it wasn’t a lion or cheetah, none of the obvious answers that sprang to mind; for obvious answers left behind evidence of themselves, spoor and marks, anything that he could follow and track. Iyabode often told himself that he did not believe in the supernatural, but the more he studied the problem the more he had to admit that it felt as if he were chasing a ghost, something that would be caught only if it wanted him to catch it.

Shouldering his backpack Iyabode stepped forward, leaving the rolling lands of the savanna and entering the shadowed world of the Pendjari forest.

][][

Xia dreamed, making small clicking noises of contentment. Xia loved dreaming. It was the only time she didn’t feel absolutely and utterly alone.

Curled around the stump of an old balboa tree she recalled how, long, long ago, she had tumbled down from the heavens. She had only been an egg back then, drifting through the cosmos, until the gravity of a gentle blue-green planet pulled her to it. She had no idea how old she was, really, but after 91,3105 days she officially stopped counting. If Phrace, the Life Giver, or Niss, Queen of the Hive, wanted her to know they would have told her. Sometimes they did visit her while she slept. They were the only ones who ever called her daughter, called her, “my darling love,” let her know that she belonged somewhere, to someone. Nothing in her waking world ever made her feel that way.

Breathing heavily in the heat her tongue darted out to lick the dew off her exoskeleton, her small slit-nostrils twitching. It was then that she smelled him.

Now fully awake, Xia sat up, her long tail twitching. She plucked stray strands of grass from off her thorax and took a deep breath. All around her the world gave off fascinating and terrible scents. She could smell the negative ions of a bank of storm clouds a mile overhead; there was the constant musk of tree rot and mold; plants bursting with chloroplast; the beating heart of a hartebeest far out on the grassland; the pheromones cicadas give off when they are in heat. In the middle of all that, making his way deeper into Pendjari, was the strange hunter. She padded lightly across the glen, her morning dreams forgotten. Slipping up into a tree she looked about and waited, hissing happily to herself.

When the scent seemed to fade away she did her best impression of a frown. Growling in disappointment, she tensed, then bounced high into the air. For a moment it felt like she was flying, until, softly, she landed with ease in another tree. The leaves whispered as the trunk tilted from the force of her impact, causing mottled sunlight to run in crazy circles all over the forest floor.

Xia’s sharp translucent teeth suddenly bared themselves as she tried to make sense of what she was smelling. The race of man couldn’t simply disappear into thin air, not like she could. They always left trails that she could follow. She could hear them breathing before they even entered the forest, could smell their footprints hours after they passed by, could read their moods by the amount of adrenaline running through their blood. Dropping to the forest floor she moved on all fours from shadow to shadow, following the man’s tracks, until she came upon a water hole near a small bubbling creek. Ferns and vines grew in clumps along its bank. It was here that the footsteps simply disappeared.

Xia sat back on her haunches and thought. He wouldn’t have walked into the pond, the mud would have pulled him under. She had seen it happen before when buffaloes came to drink and doubted that even her monstrous strength would be enough to free her if she was foolish enough to venture in. Growling low, she sniffed the ground. She could tell where he stopped at the water’s edge, that was easy. But after that there was nothing. Frowning and hissing, she glared at the shadows here and there, trying to fathom how he had evaded her.

Iyabode nearly screamed when he finally saw what had been tracking him. He had known for a while something was up in the trees, a shadow leaping from trunk to trunk every time he turned his head away. He held the hollow river reed nightly in his mouth, trying to get his heart to stop pounding in his ears as the star beast that Kafoucha had warned him of materialized from out of the forest. It was huge, towering over the edge of the water. There were no eyes in its dark face that it turned this way and that, sniffing the air. Its skeletal arms were folded over naked, mammal-like breasts. He could see a crest behind the deformed, oblong skull. It looked entirely out of place in the warm West African sunlight.

Slowly Iyabode attempted to shift his weight in the heavy mud. For whatever reason the mud and water appeared to render him invisible to the monster. Instead of repositioning himself, though, he floundered. The mud was much stronger than he realized. The act of moving began to suck him down, as if to claim him for itself. Suddenly he was no longer breathing air but pond water as his reed disappeared below the surface. His lungs expanded for their last time and he could feel blood painfully contracting in his ear drums. He opened his mouth to scream and a flood of blackness poured in.

Xia’s head snapped to the left at the first commotion that broke the surface of the mud pond. So he had chanced to hide underwater in the one place that evaded her sense of smell and sound. She couldn’t decide if that had been foolish or brilliant. Standing to her full height she reached out and dragged the half-drowned man out from the mud, holding him aloft like a trophy. She could hear his heart beating and slowly he opened his eyes, the one part of the human body she never really understood, and gazed at her. Hissing softly she pressed her face to his.

It was this gesture, one so unmistakably human, that shocked Iyabode the most. The star beast was even more horrifyingly exotic up close. It? She? held him as if he were a rag doll to play with, a much loved toy. Purring her strange alien purr, she nuzzled his neck, his chest, rubbing herself against him.

Xia grinned, an expression that was nearly indistinguishable from her frown. She had finally caught her prize. She leaned down and breathed in all his scents, memorizing the odor of his DNA, her queer tongue with its tiny jaws licking away the mud from his face, his ears, neck and lips, slowly exploring his mouth until her great tongue filled him. A low rumble started in her chest and she pulled his body to hers until he was nearly smothered between her breasts. She didn’t see fear in his expression, only amazement.

Iyabode felt that he was quickly losing grip on reality. He was aroused. How could he be aroused? He shuddered when she continued to lick and rub. Her skin was so soft, her tongue was so different from anything that had ever touched him that it made his blood boil. Moving down his body he felt her claws lightly rake him. She could already smell the blood that had puckered across his chest caused by her long nails.

He wanted to call her something — beast, monster, devil, nightmare — but Iyabode found that he had lost the ability for speech as her impossible tongue wrapped itself around his cock.

His hips jerked and he gasped as her tongue, wet and rough, tasted him, as he grew harder and longer with each touch. Pleased to no end, she turned her eyeless head as if watching his reactions, as her tongue, wrapped around him, dragged his cock into her mouth. She heard him give his own hiss and wondered if it was in pleasure or pain. She hoped both.

Still purring hard, she continued to explore his pleasure centers. She could hear his rapid breathing, his chest heaving up and down. The human body is so easily fooled into thinking death pleasurable. When she tasted the first signs of his oncoming orgasm from the tip of his cock, she continued to lap, hoping for more, loving the cosmic taste. This was what space dust had tasted like when she had been nothing more than an egg, lost in the void.

An egg.

She had never understood certain parts of her anatomy. Her clit brought her pleasure, that was obvious. But, by Jah and all that was holy, the wet little slit underneath it made no sense. If that was where her eggs came from then she must be barren, for no matter how much she played with it she had never felt a stirring deep within, never had used long forgotten muscles to push the fragile shells out. Perhaps if she had been among her own people she would have been better informed. Perhaps if she could remember her dreams better then her holy mothers would have explained everything to her. Perhaps.

Now, though, she felt powers well up from deep within, the abyssal magic, that she had no possible way to say no to.

Purring hard, she crawled over Iyabode’s inert body, her long tail sweeping down to curl gently around his cock. He groaned as she tightened, holding him in place. Taking a deep breath she lowered herself down onto him.

“Kssh … !”

He groaned with pleasure, his eyes rolling back into his skull. The rumble in her breasts increased as she impaled herself. She was tight, throbbing, radiating. Her tail let go and he slid, glorious inch by inch, into her. A whimpering hiss escaped from her lips, her mouth opened wide in pleasure, her long tongue hung limply, the tiny jaws snapping at the virgin air.

Trilling in bliss, she became accustomed to his size and began to move. So … this was the secret of joy. He gasped and both of his hands dug into the wet pond mud. With her skeletal fingers she lifted each from the ground and placed them on her soft, mammalian breasts. Whimpering and hissing, she grooved and ground her hips slowly down against his, delighting in how his pelvis bone rubbed her at each stroke. She loved the queer, little noises he made in the heat of passion.

Inarticulate noises escaped from his lungs. Iyabode knew that he wouldn’t last long like this. She was well over seven feet in height, weighed possibly twice as much as he did, had muscles that could bend steel if she set her mind to it. None of that mattered. As she rocked against him, letting him fill her at each stroke, he surged up, quickly wrapping his arms around her wide hips, his cock buried to its hilt, pistoning inside her. With a war cry he rolled them both onto their sides.

Xia growled, but Iyabode could hear her moan with passion as well.

His lover now found herself on her back, her tail whipping itself back and forth between their legs, tickling his balls. Breathing hard, he propped himself up on his elbows, allowing her long legs to get a good grip in the mud. Grunting, he drove hard into her and heard her yowl and growl in pleasure. His sweat rolled off his back, causing little rainbow dots to appear all over her exoskeleton wherever they fell. He could feel his orgasm bubbling up: hot, rude and unstoppable. He managed to pant out, “I’m gonna cum.” Words that were lost on Xia.

Iyabode had been taught that it was poor manners to cum on your first date, but at that point he didn’t care. Biological laws of inter-species mating meant nothing. He felt his cock rise and throb even more, if that was possible, shudders running down his spine as he tried to pull out of her. But Xia’s cunt, which she was just now learning how to control, was clenched tight around him. She simply held him tight, using her muscles as if she possessed a vagina dentata, sucking him in deeper and deeper in, over and over and over.

Twisting violently in her embrace Iyabode’s orgasm sprayed his soul deep inside her, triggering Xia’s own tidal wave. As she exploded into stars she felt awe that there now existed another creature in the universe to cause the sort of pleasure that for the last 2500 years only she herself was capable of. She threw her head back, opened her jaws and gave the longest, drawn-out alien shriek that the forests of Pendjari had ever heard. Birds flew in panic into the air; elephants stampeded; the last twelve remaining African painted wolves howled; and Dr. Kafoucha Sazu, midwife and shaman, sat up in bed and smiled to herself.

Xia’s scream came from another world. It was filled with triumph and pleasure and astonishment. It was the cry that comes when the very last of a species realizes that it is no longer alone.

Panting, allowing their mutual earthquake-shivers to pass between them, Iyabode felt like a dead thing in her arms as she arched her back and pressed his lifeless body between her breasts, her thorax, her thick thighs that held his cock deep within her and brought, even for just a moment, peace.

][][

laying in my arms
I’m amazed how your eyes now
hold all the cosmos

my dear little dead one

12 Saturday Apr 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Prose

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Tags

Federico Garcia Lorca, homoerotic, Juan Ramírez de Lucas, my dear little dead one, prose, short-short story

“I can’t listen to you. I can’t listen to your voice. It’s as though I’d drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I’m drowning – but I go on down.”
― Federico Garcia Lorca, Bodas de sangre.

I love the dead because the living spend so much time worrying about them. Plagues come, plagues go; someone flits like a shadow by your open bedroom door; the child of a broken heart discovers a thousand years later that kissing isn’t immoral, degenerate or likely to spread disease. During all that time — you living, you dull creatures — you either worship or fear all those who have gone before you.

“You have to know, sister,” Juan Ramírez de Lucas said, pale and drawn, “you have to know that no one here will show you disrespect. Say what you wish. But will you not sit down? You look very tired.”

The nun — her fingers still smelling of freshly cut ginger, copper, blood — took the offered chair and fixed her eyes upon the one sitting across from her.

“It is this, senior,” she spoke rapidly, lest her courage should freeze in her throat. “He is unhappy. He is in pain. All night long he hears the brute iron and the cocking of rifles. He smells the foul smoke of burning bodies and the shrieking that hides in the throat. It has awakened my dear little dead one.

“When I guarded him with holy water he heard nothing. Back then the fires of the century held no curiosity for him, since the hearts of the living are based upon greed and corruption and hate.

“But one night he came to me, shaking the nail out of his coffin. I awoke but the deviltry had already been done, he was awake, the dear sleep of eternity was stirring. He thought it was his last trump card and he wondered why he was still in his grave. But we talked together and it was not so bad at the first. But, senior, now he is frantic. He is in hell. O, think, think, senior, what it is to have the long sleep of the grave so rudely disturbed? Love? Yes, love called him back from the sleep that he so patiently endured!”

The nun stopped abruptly and caught her breath. Juan Ramírez had listened without change of expression, convinced that he was facing a madwoman. But the travesty wearied him, and involuntarily he stood up as if to leave the room.

“O, senior, not yet! not yet!” panted the nun. “It is of him that I came to speak. He told me that he wished to lie there and listen to the earth and sky and all the secret’s of the sea; so I stopped sprinkling holy water on his grave. But the dead have needs that the living cannot understand; for he, too, your love, is wretched and horror-stricken, senior. He moans and screams. His unmarked grave can never be found. He cannot break out of it. I have heard his frightful word from his grave tonight, senior; I swear it upon the cross.”

Juan Ramírez de Lucas shook from head to foot, staggered from his chair. He was staring at the nun as if she had become the ghost of his dead lover. “You hear him, too?” he gasped.

“He is not at peace, senior. He moans and shrieks in a terrible, smothering way, as if a bony hand were pressing down upon his chest until his ribs crack.”

The young man suddenly recovered himself and dashed from the room. The nun passed her hand across her fevered forehead, as if a terrible dream still remained in the corners of her memory. She stood, facing the door. The living are all cowards when it comes to the great gray shadow that they blithely call death.

I have searched for Hart Crane among the dice of drowned men’s bones. I have wandered Alfacar looking for the fountain of tears. Federico, your body has yet to be discovered. We call the dead back to us but the living have nothing to say.

onna bugeisha, my daughter [1]

28 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by babylon crashing in Prose

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Tags

fiction, Japanese mythology, Onna bugeisha, prose, short story

 

I.
Once, on a bright morning in the month of March, with branches of blooming cherry trees framing the world, Kumori, a girl of some fifteen-years, sat on a low gunmetal-gray wall, watching party after party of armed men, retainers, their robes showing the crests of a dozen different local lords, riding up to the castle of the recently widowed Lady Kobayashi.

“I would love to know,” the girl mused to herself, lazily waving a sprig of cherry blossoms in the warm air, “just what ill-wind blows those rough-looking bastards here.”

She wasn’t sure what a ‘rough-looking bastard’ actually was, but she had overheard the phrase used in the wine-house that her mother worked in and was dying to try it out. Sunshine, dappled by the swaying branches above her, dazzled her eyes. The girl frowned, staring up at the white wisps of clouds set against the deep blue silk of a sky.

“Or is this about the sacred pledge, I wonder, that my lady made concerning settling, once and for all, her quarrel with Lord Watanabe? Or could she be intending to sweep the woods clean?”

It was hard being only fifteen and having a mother who worked in a wine-house. Most of her friends were already engaged in the Lady’s service. Soon they would be married off to the sons of local lords who remained faithful to the House of Kobayashi. Kumori, though, was considered too rambunctious a girl to learn the tea ceremony and calligraphy and powder her face each morning before the sun rose. However, just because she excelled on horse-back and could hit anything in the air with a bow and arrow didn’t mean that many of the girls who wore fancy kimonos didn’t have secret crushes on Kumori.

“Ah! here comes lovely Fuyu,” Kumori thought to herself, spotting a jovial-looking girl coming down from the direction of the castle. “She might be able to tell me the meaning of this gathering.”

Leaping to her feet, the girl started off at a brisk walk across the field.

“Ah, Mistress Kumori,” Fuyu said as Kumori stopped in front of her. The hand-maiden couldn’t help blush every time the ragamuffin girl was around, despite the expertly applied white powder, “what brings you so near to the castle? It is not often that you favor us with your presence anymore.”

There was reproach in the girl’s voice, though Kumori pretended not to hear.

“I am happier in the woods, as you well know, and was on my way there but now, when I paused at the sight of all these ruffians flocking in to Kobayashi Castle. What undertaking has Lady Kobayashi started upon now?”

“My lady keeps her own counsel,” said girl, “but I think a shrewd guess might be made at the purpose of a gathering. It was but three days since that her grangers were beaten back by all those rude, ruthless, landless men who call you kin; they caught in the very act of cutting up a juicy, fat buck, or so I am told. As you know, my lady, though easy and well-disposed to every girl who comes into her service, is not fond of vagabonds abusing their forest privileges on her land. Just three days ago she swore that she would clear the forest of these poachers. Or, I do not know, it may be, that this gathering of retainers is for the purpose of falling upon that robber and tyrant, Lord Toshio of Watanabe, who has already begun to harass some of our outlying lands. It is a quarrel which will have to be fought out sooner or later, and for my lady it seems the sooner the better.”

“Arigato, Fuyu-chan,” said Kumori. “I must not stand here gossiping with you. The news you have told me, as you know, touches me deeply, for I would make sure that no harm should befall my kin.”

“I plead with you, Kumori-chan, tell no one that the news came from me, for mild as Lady Kobayashi to those who attend on her at her bath, she would, I think, let me starve in the woods if she knew that I might have given a warning through which the brigands might slip through her fingers.”

“Do not worry, Fuyu-chan; I can be as silent as the rot on a tree when the need arises. Can you tell me when her lady’s forces are likely to set out?”

“Soon,” Fuyu replied. “Those who first arrived I left swilling Kobayashi Castle’s rare sake, devouring rice cake upon rice cake. The cooks of the castle have been hard pressed all day, and from what I hear, this band of ruffians will set forth as soon as dusk falls upon the walls of my lady’s keep.”

[to be cont.]

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erotica [links]

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ars poetica: the blogs a-b

  • sandra beasley
  • cecilia ann
  • all things said and done
  • sommer browning
  • aliki barnstone
  • margaret bashaar
  • american witch
  • stacy blint
  • brilliant books
  • tiel aisha ansari
  • black satin
  • wendy babiak
  • mary biddinger
  • kristy bowen
  • alzheimer's poetry project
  • afterglow
  • anny ballardini
  • sirama bajo
  • afghan women's writing project
  • clair becker
  • maria benet
  • lynn behrendt
  • armenian poetry project
  • the great american poetry show
  • emma bolden
  • megan burns
  • the art blog

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Archives

ars poetica: the blogs c-d

  • jessica crispin
  • mackenzie carignan
  • jackie clark
  • juliet cook
  • dog ears books
  • flint area writers
  • jennifer k. dick
  • lyle daggett
  • michelle detorie
  • abigail child
  • CRB
  • kate durbin
  • julia cohen
  • eduardo c. corral
  • natalia cecire
  • cleveland poetics
  • chicago poetry calendar
  • linda lee crosfield
  • cheryl clark
  • jehanne dubrow
  • lorna dee cervantes
  • maxine clarke
  • julie carter
  • maria damon
  • roberto cavallera

ars poetica: the blogs e-h

  • julie r. enszer
  • jessica goodfellow
  • susana gardner
  • joy garnett
  • herstoria
  • elixher
  • hayaxk (ՀԱՅԱՑՔ)
  • carrie etter
  • nada gordon
  • bernardine evaristo
  • k. lorraine graham
  • vickie harris
  • maureen hurley
  • jane holland
  • jeannine hall gailey
  • elisa gabbert
  • pamela hart
  • cindy hunter morgan
  • human writes
  • elizabeth glixman
  • maggie may ethridge
  • ghosts of zimbabwe
  • joy harjo
  • sarah wetzel fishman
  • carol guess
  • donna fleischer
  • amanda hocking
  • liz henry
  • kai fierle-hedrick

ars poetica: the blogs i-l

  • amy king
  • dick jones
  • kennifer kilgore-caradec
  • ikonomenasa
  • a big jewish blog
  • miriam levine
  • IEPI
  • diane lockward
  • rebeka lembo
  • krystal languell
  • sandy longhorn
  • sheryl luna
  • language hat
  • meg johnson
  • anne kellas
  • insani kamil
  • renee liang
  • becca klaver
  • laila lalami
  • irene latham
  • maggie jochild
  • lesley jenike
  • stephanie lane
  • megan kaminski
  • emily lloyd
  • joy leftow
  • donna khun
  • charmi keranen
  • helen losse
  • gene justice
  • amy lawless
  • lesbian poetry archieves
  • las vegas poets organization

ars poetica: the blogs m-o

  • new issues poetry & prose
  • sharanya manivannan
  • iamnasra oman
  • michelle mc grane
  • rebecca mabanglo-mayor
  • maud newton
  • michigan writers network
  • motown writers
  • adrienne j. odasso
  • the malaysian poetic chronicles
  • michigan poetry
  • sophie mayer
  • ottawa poetry newsletter
  • michigan writers resources
  • Nanny Charlotte
  • marion mc cready
  • mlive: michigan poetry news
  • majena mafe
  • gina myer
  • wanda o'connor
  • heather o'neill
  • deborah miranda
  • marianne morris
  • caryn mirriam-goldberg
  • nzepc
  • monica mody
  • january o'neil

ars poetica: the blogs p-r

  • kristin prevallet
  • ariana reines
  • sophie robinson
  • d. a. powell
  • nikki reimer
  • red cedar review
  • sina queyras
  • helen rickerby
  • pearl pirie
  • poetry society of michigan
  • rachel phillips
  • maria padhila
  • chamko rani
  • nicole peyrafitte
  • joanna preston
  • susan rich
  • split this rock
  • katrina rodabaugh

ars poetica: the blogs s-z

  • switchback books
  • vassilis zambaras
  • scottish poetry library
  • ron silliman
  • tamar yoseloff
  • shin yu pai
  • tuesday poems
  • tim yu
  • sexy poets society
  • southern michigan poetry
  • temple of sekhmet
  • Stray Lower
  • umbrella
  • womens quarterly conversation
  • sharon zeugin

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